Chiaroscuro
by StraitjacketChic
Summary: Or "The many lives (and quite a few deaths) of Helena Blythe." Over the years, Helena and Hotch find themselves drawn together as strangers, as opponents, as friends, and as lovers. The thousand little lies that people in love tell themselves, the inadvertent truths they reveal to each other, and the resulting fugue of lights and shadows when they come together. Hotch/OC
1. The Runaway

" _A man's dying is more the survivors' affair than his own."_

 _-Thomas Mann_

 **April 25, 2004**

 **Quantico, VA**

SSA Jack Flynn sat at his desk in a half-stupor, leafing mechanically through the folders upon folders of graphic imagery that surrounded his on every side. Demand for BAU consultation had skyrocketed in the last few weeks, not-so-coincidentally after the publication of David Rossi's new book. _Profiteering jackass._ _He has the right idea._

As the unit's senior agent, it was Flynn's dubious honor to choose the cases the unit worked, and at the moment he was finding it difficult to distinguish between urgency levels of the various rashes of stabbings and gun violence across the country. _One more case tonight, Flynn. You're getting too old for this shit._

He slammed the folder-a particularly fat, juicy one-down in front of him and flipped it open. The first image to meet his eyes made his grizzled, hardened face contort in disgust. As he read further, he shuddered and reached for his phone.

"Hotch? Are you home yet?... Well, too damn bad. Get back here; we've got a live one."

* * *

One by one, the team filtered into the briefing room and settled at the round table. Spencer Reid, the brilliant but callow debutant, leaned forward in anticipation, squinting slightly. Derek Morgan reclined, handsome, cocky, and keen-eyed, in his chair, tilting it onto its back legs. Jason Gideon sat perfectly still and watched Flynn's face with a knowing look on his craggy face. _I hate that look._ Aaron Hotchner just looked tired. Flynn smothered a twinge of guilt; Haley Hotchner had grown less and less tolerant of her husband's odd work hours over the years. _That's it, Jack. Not content to ruin your own marriage, you just had to go and burn Hotch's happiness to the ground too. Attaboy._

He tacked the most evocative photographs to the evidence board first and heard each of his team members wince.

"Castration." Hotch spoke first, his voice measured as ever. "That's uncommon."

"Was it done while they were alive?" asked Reid, rising to examine the images.

"Blood spatter reports suggest that it was." Another collective shudder ran through the room. Flynn made sure to keep his voice level for the next part too. "They were also raped."

"So how does the M.O. look? What's the sequence of events?"

"It looks like they're knocked out with a drug via needle, at which point they're secured to their beds. Tox screens show that the drug has completely worn off by the time they die, so they're beaten with blunt objects found in the home until the drug wears off. Then they're castrated, turned over, and raped."

"Cause of death is blood loss?"

"Yep."

"Any DNA from the sexual assault?"

"No, and the degree of tearing is extreme, so either the attacker wears a condom and is extremely well-endowed, or he or she is using an object for the penetration."

"It's significant that the crimes don't seem to require much physical strength," Gideon remarked. "And this degree of torture, coupled with the overtly sexual focus of the violence, suggests intense misandry." Hotch glanced sharply at his unit chief.

"You think it might be a woman?"

"I think we should be less ready than usual to dismiss the possibility. Given the nature of the crimes, we could be looking at a young woman with sexual assault as her stressor. This would be her way of enacting a revenge fantasy."

"That's another curious thing," Flynn volunteered, consulting his notes. "Out of the four victims, only one was married. Samson Blythe." Hotch's eyes flickered at the name.

"Something wrong, Hotch?" Gideon, sharp-eyed as ever, asked his protegé.

"Could you put up a photo? The name sounds familiar," Hotch said, frowning. Flynn obliged. The image of the handsome golden-haired man elicited a sharp intake of breath from the stoic Agent Hotchner.

"Yeah. I met him once. Only very briefly." He trailed off, and he appeared to be struggling with himself. When he seemed to have succumbed, he asked: "Is there any mention of a "Helena" in his file?"

"Yes, that's his widow. Helena Blythe, née Benedict. Twenty-three years old. Last known to be a data analyst for the CIA."

"Last known?"

"That's right. She's missing. Has been for nearly a year."

"How does a CIA agent just vanish?"

"Trust me, I've been on their uptight asses since I saw that. Even put the computer broad on it."

"Garcia," Morgan corrected him automatically.

"As it turns out, the CIA can be a little cagey about its agents. But if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say she's gone AWOL and they're doing their damndest to keep it under wraps."

"That's… very unfortunate news," said Hotchner in his undemonstrative way. Flynn could never get much from that man's hard features, but he noticed Gideon watching him closely. "So our primary suspect is a spy on the run?"

"Well," Flynn said, grinning at the surrounding team, "the good news is that this case is local to D.C., so we won't be traveling." Morgan glared at him.

"So why the hell did you interrupt my _very_ promising conversation with a girl named Stacy to drag our asses back here tonight?" he demanded.

"Because the first murder occurred three weeks ago. In the the last five days, there have been three more. We're looking at a new body tomorrow or _maybe_ the day after if the killer decides to take a day off to sip frappucinos. No sleep for us tonight, chickies."

* * *

As dawn broke over Quantico, Hotch sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. After poring over victimology for the last four hours, he felt drained and sad. It was deeply unsettling to reconcile the memory of the young, laughing Adonis whose hand he had shaken with the cold, mutilated carcass on the evidence board.

Samson Blythe had been in college when they crossed paths, a beautiful young man, newly in love and full of promise. At the time, Hotch's attention had been more drawn to the lovely girl that Blythe had eventually married: merry, red-haired Helena Benedict.

Like Hotch, they had married barely out of their teens; he was twenty-two, she was only twenty. Hotch wondered bitterly whether their experiences with marrying young were more positive than his own, or whether they too had grown apart, leaving a bitter chasm in the middle of a once-healthy whole. Whether that loving couple he had seen at its very beginnings could have given rise to the blood and violence in the case file, and driven a young woman like Helena to the lowest depths of depravity.

"Hey, Hotch." Reid poked his shoulder tentatively. Hotch turned around, making sure to mitigate his expression when he met the young man's eye; his habitual scowl had a tendency to frighten Reid to the point of paralysis.

"Yeah?"

"Are you ready to drive to D.C.? We can head to the precinct now."

"Yeah, let's go. I'll meet you out there." The skinny boy jerked his head in acknowledgement and scurried away. Hotch sighed and hoisted himself up, feeling suddenly very old for his thirty-two years.

* * *

As he drove, Hotch replayed his brief meeting with Helena Benedict and Samson Blythe in his head, searching for clues. It had been June or July of 1998. He had been on a solo consultation in Philadelphia, almost as sleep deprived as he was today.

 _ **June 13th, 1998**_

 _Carrying his case files under his arm, Hotch trudged towards his hotel. After spending the day interviewing the broken young women that the unsub had victimized, he was desperately in need of something warm and bracing._ Probably not alcohol. You're gloomy enough already, _he cautioned himself._

 _His eyes scanned the streets for attackers and warm drinks alike, and alighted finally upon a warm glow issuing from what looked like Van Gogh's "Cafe Terrace at Night" come to life. He hurried forward and pulled open the embellished wooden door ("Welcome, friend! Open 6am to 12am every day!," read the cursive sign), allowing the light and warmth of the place to swallow him whole._

 _The place was beautiful and sedate and smelled of coffee grounds and baked sourdough. The glass display featured all manner of delicate pastries and hearty loaves of bread. The place was nearly empty save for a few students who huddled together in erudite gaggles, pouring over their books._

 _Hotch made his way to the counter, where a girl stood thoroughly engrossed in a book titled_ Introductions to Algorithms, _which she held close to her eyes_. _He couldn't see her face, but a voluminous body of coppery-red curls emanated from behind the book. Hotch took the moment before she noticed him to appreciate the vision of comfortable, scholarly youth around him, taking in the young men and women so completely taken with their particular vocations._

 _To avoid startling her, he alerted her to his presence by slightly rustling his coat. She lowered the book immediately and treated him to a warm, glowing smile, as though he were an old, dear friend. It caught him off to greeted that way; he couldn't remember the last time his job had thrown him in the way of anyone capable of such an uninhibited smile._

" _You look like death," she told him, her eyebrows drawing together with concern. "You looking to stay up or fall asleep?"_

" _Uh-" Again, she caught him off guard with her strange solicitude. She awaited his answer patiently, her eyes taking in the details of his face, his hands, his coat (including, he thought, the slight dent near his hip where he carried his gun). "Staying up. For a long time, probably."_

" _Triple mocha sound good to you?"_

" _A… mocha?" He was taken aback. Who would ever look at him and suggest a sugary drink?_

" _Yeah. It's not really sweet or anything. Just coffee and steamed milk and as much cocoa powder as I can fit in the mug." He shot her another quizzical look, then relented._

" _Sure. Why not." She grinned again._

" _I can't believe I just got a big tough FBI agent to order a triple mocha. Sam'll flip-" She paused her celebration and turned to look at him earnestly. "You_ are _FBI, aren't you?" she inquired. The question seemed to mean the world to her, and that drew a smile from Hotch._

" _That obvious, huh?" he said ruefully.  
_ " _You might be the closest thing to a walking stereotype I've ever met," she confirmed apologetically. As Hotch smiled and drew out his wallet to pay for the drink, she held up an imperious hand. "Oh hell no. This one's on the house." For the third time, Hotch was startled._

" _Why?" he asked, flummoxed._

" _You're really underestimating how terrible you look. If I didn't try to prop you up I might be guilty of negligent homicide of a fed. I don't need that kind of heat."_

" _That's not at all how negligent homicide works."_

" _I know that, nerd. I study criminology. But is it at least a good enough explanation that you'll shut up and accept the drink?" Hotch considered his options briefly, then nodded. "Damn straight. It'll be right out." She set about her task with gusto, which seemed to be the only way she knew how to do things._

 _Unsure of whether to sit down at a table or continue the conversation, Hotch opted to stand awkwardly and occupy his eyes with the notices on the cork board near the counter, the pastries in the glass case, and the busy barista herself. The first two proved to pale in competition with the latter option. She was a girl of average height and lissome build, red haired and liberally freckled. Her figure was extremely well-developed, but she was clearly young enough that Hotch felt filthy for noticing; with her modest reserves of puppy fat and soft, clear face, she couldn't be older than eighteer. Sean's age. Everything she did, she did swiftly, her small white hands flitting about the machines like energetic birds. Her uncommonly full, shapely mouth seemed to fall naturally into a smile when at rest. She glanced up at him while the machine poured coffee into his mug. Her eyes were a warm and demonstrative blue, fringed with long curling lashes._

" _My name's Helena. You probably couldn't figure that one out by scrutinizing me."_

" _Your tag says that it's John," he pointed out. He entertained the idea that she was actually a character from a Lewis Carroll book._

" _Yeah, it does that," she replied unconcernedly. "So do I just call you The Fuzz, or…?" she trailed off with another smile._

" _I'm SSA Aaron Hotchner." He held out his hand and she shook it firmly, though hers was entirely enveloped by his grip._

" _That's quite a mouthful, SSA Aaron Hotchner." She pulled his mug out of the machine and balanced a twisted shaving of chocolate on the brim._

" _People seem to call me Hotch," he conceded. At that, she actually chortled. Heartily. "What?" he demanded with mock indignation._

" _Nothing, nothing." She stifled her giggles and pushed the mug across the counter. "A stern name for a stern man. Just… what, was Butch already taken?"_

" _I see your point." He cast around for a new topic. Now that she had given him his drink, he had no excuse to stay at the counter and talk to her. He found that between sitting at a table looking through the horrific work of a serial rapist and talking to Helena, his preference lay firmly with the latter. "So what's a criminology student doing with an book on algorithms?" She heaved a long, melodramatic sigh._

" _Trying to stay relevant. Computers are the way of the future. Which is a damned nuisance."_

" _Not a fan?"  
_ " _I like the mathematical side, and I'm good at it. Which is lucky, since CS is my second major. But ask me to translate pseudocode into a real, working program and every machine within a ten foot radius spontaneously combusts." She illustrated her point by throwing up her hands in a mimed explosion. "I'm an accidental Luddite," she concluded, shrugging plaintively. Hotch, to his surprise, found himself chuckling. Maybe it was the warm, chocolatey drink, or perhaps just the temporary vacation from the tragedy of his case, but he felt altogether quite rejuvenated._

" _You must be busy."_

" _Two majors, two jobs and a summer gig, plus a lot of acting out against my newly lapsed Catholicism. It's lucky I've always suffered from an excess of energy."_

" _So I see," he agreed through a smile._

" _So what brings you to Philly, Hotch?"_

 _He sobered as he tried to decide how much detail to give her. The victims in his case were all about a decade older than Helena, but he still felt a strong urge to protect her from it._ Always have been a sucker for a pretty girl, haven't you, Hotch? _He settled on the bare minimum. He didn't want to plunge back into the darkness of the case._

" _I'm consulting on a case for the local police department. I'm with the BAU." She lit up again, her eyes bright with eager curiosity._

" _You're a profiler? Never would have guessed, Hotch." She made sure to reiterate his nickname every time she addressed him, establishing it as a sort of instantaneous inside joke._

" _Oh? What was your guess?"_

" _Major crimes. I've met a few of them and they all have your grim aspect. But now you're much more interesting. Could you walk me through how it works? What happens when you accept a case?" Her excitement was palpable and contagious._

 _They spent a pleasant hour that way, as he described the methods of the BAU. She listened, enthralled, interrupting frequently with questions. Influenced by her endless enthusiasm for the subject, Hotch felt some of the bone-weariness, which had dogged him since the Reaper case in Boston, melt away._

 _As he was concluding his recitation of his previous case, Hotch glanced up at the clock behind Helena. 11:05 pm. He really ought to get some sleep. He looked back at his unlikely conversation partner._

" _Hey, do you have someone to walk you home? I can stay if you need me to."_ Again with that damn smile. _It was incredibly distracting._

" _You're sweet. But yes, someone's coming to escort me. Oh! There he is now!" She raised her eyes as door opened, and Hotch watched as a soft flush rose to her cheeks and a dazzling, overwhelmingly lovely smile stole across her face. She was entirely transformed by delight with this unknown champion. Hotch looked behind him to see who could inspire this kind of reaction._

 _The object of her rapture did not disappoint. He was tall and slim, with broad shoulders and large hands, like a Greek statue. His face had a cherubic loveliness, but his jaw was defined and masculine. His hair fell in golden waves over his forehead and around his temples and high cheekbones, a shade lighter than his tawny skin tone. Helena rushed around the counter to greet him, and he wrapped his arms around her waist and lifted her up as they embraced. They were the perfect pair of young lovers in that moment, haloed by one of the warm lights of the cafe._

" _Miss me?" he laughed in a light, musical tenor._

" _Yes," she replied, breathless and sincere. He kissed her again and set her back on the ground, where she appeared to suddenly remember the world around her. She grabbed the blond boy's hand and led him back the the counter. "Hey! This is Hotch. He's a mocha-drinking profiler for the BAU. Hotch, this is Samson Blythe. He's in charge of walking me home after my shift and other miscellaneous duties."_

" _It's good to meet you," said Hotch, shaking the newcomer's paint-stained hand, "but I should be going. Thanks for the drink and the company." He nodded to Helena and moved towards the door._

" _I hope you find your man," she called after him._

" _Me too," he muttered, as he stepped out of the warm sanctuary, back into the chilly night._

"So, what do you think of the vengeful woman theory?" Hotch, startled again out of his reverie by his companion's voice, glanced to the passenger seat. Reid was watching the road pensively, brows knitted.

"It has its merits," he replied reluctantly. "I think Gideon advanced it a bit prematurely. You shouldn't let it color your judgment right now." Reid nodded slowly.

"I'm having trouble reconciling the different parts of the crime."

"How do you mean?

"Well…" The young man trailed off, marshalling his quick, prolific mind. "There are just so many stages to the crime, and some of them suggest a methodical, efficient killer while the others seem to indicate someone acting in the heat of a violent rage." Hotch frowned in thought.

"Which steps seem methodical to you? I'm only seeing brutality."

"Well for one thing, the overall procedure is well-conceived. Every kill follows the same sequence of events, as though someone were checking off a list: drugging, binding, beating, castration, sexual assault. That doesn't strike me as blind rage."

"Go on."

"The drugging is well-executed. The needle always finds a vein. And all the victims lived in heavily populated areas, but no one heard them scream. That's a very smooth execution."

"Not bad. Anything else?"

"The castrations look like they're done with surgical precision. It's not just random hacking and stabbing; this unsub has medical training."

"Those are good observations, Reid," Hotch said, sincerely impressed. Reid was only on his second case at the BAU, but he was quickly proving his mettle. A quick look to his right revealed the younger man was glowing with pride. _I should really praise him more often._ "Let's see if we find something at the crime scenes to put them into context."

* * *

When Hotch entered the studio apartment of Samson and Helena Blythe, he fancied he could almost feel the desolation of the place. All the domestic touches rang hollow in light of recent events; the overflowing bookshelves, the CDs around the stereo, the copious writing utensils. It was a once-beloved home, now completely abandoned.

"Reid, look for anything that might give you a clue about the state of mind of either of the Blythes. We need to profile both of them if we're going to understand the way the unsub operates." Reid nodded vaguely, already enthralled by the refrigerator, which was positively covered with handwritten notes.

"I'll start typographical analysis on these notes. Looks like they were written by Helena. She even dated them. They were written before she disappeared, but I think he put them up later. Like he missed her. Oh, let me know if you find anything else in her handwriting. I'd like samples from different contexts to compare."

Hotch nodded absently, but his attention was fixed on the far end of the room. Next to the bed was an easel and a vast body of paintings in various states of progress stacked and propped against the walls of the spacious flat. He carefully removed his jacket and began sorting through the canvases, looking at the ones at the very bottom first. These were accomplished representational works, almost all with the same subject: Helena.

Samson had painted her over and over again, in various poses and stages of undress. Some were quick and opportunistic acrylics, completed when she reposed with a book or stood at the stove. Others were careful, painstakingly accurate. He had taken care to arrange her freckles and trace the golden light the red cataracts of her hair. The loveliest and most sensual of the early works was a large, sunlit oil painting of Helena gazing languidly out at the viewer from the bed, forget-me-nots strewn around her and a sunflower clutched to her chest. She was entirely nude, and he had carefully rendered her white, freckled shoulders, the curling of her lashes, and the grace of her silhouette. But as Hotch sorted through these early portraits, a half-formed notion nagged at the corners of his mind. There was something about the painting that threw him off. That made him wonder about the state of mind of the artist. He moved on to the more recent pieces.

These were an entirely different beast, and as he worked his way through the stacks, the situation resolved itself in Hotchner's practiced mind.

* * *

Meanwhile, Reid found himself rifling in drawers for another morsel of their suspect, shelving his discomfort at the immense breach of privacy that it constituted.

Helena's notes were extraordinarily intimate. Not sexual, but personal and affectionate in a way that was entirely foreign to Reid. They ranged from inside jokes that he could not decipher to casual reminders to Samson to wear his arch supports.

Finally, in the locked bottom drawer of a wooden desk that served mainly as the pedestal for a battered-looking desktop computer, he found what he sought. The slim yellow notebook appeared at first glance to be merely a throwaway piece of harmless rubbish, but when Reid flipped through the pages, he found the contents truly fascinating. Still staring down at the notebook in awe, he flipped open his phone and dialed Garcia.

"You've reached the great and terrible oracle of the great Python, make your request and proffer tribute, mortal."

"Hey, I have what looks like a journal that's been encoded by hand. Could you decipher it for me?"

"You called me to run frequency analysis on a notebook?" Garcia sounded overwhelmed with disappointment in him. "Who do you think I am, a freshman starting cryptography? Come on, boy wonder, you're better than this."

"It probably is just a Vigenere cipher. Sorry." The tech wizard heaved a deep, sad sigh.

"Fine. Send me the text and I'll fix it. But remember, I'm not your ditzy receptionist."

"I promise, the thought hadn't even crossed my mind. I'll send the text over when I get back to the precinct."

"Wait, you're at the apartment? Can you turn on the computer there?" Reid looked around wildly.

"Ummmm…" _I could have sworn I saw a computer somewhere…_ "Oh. Yeah, on it." In his eagerness to find a handwriting sample, he had forgotten to notice the desktop computer as anything other than an oversized paperweight. Now he approached it cautiously and scouted for an innocuous-looking button to press.

There followed a tedious half hour of frustration on Reid's part and incredulity on Garcia's as she attempted to guide him through the process of breaking into the Blythes' computer.

Finally, Garcia threw her hands up in despair.

"I can't get into the damn thing without a password. Reid, use your profiler voodoo and get me a password please."

"Morgan's on his way. He's good at that kind of empathy."

The door opened and a uniformed officer entered.

"You needed an errand runner, Agent Reid?"

"Oh, yeah. Hang on. Sorry, Garcia, gotta go. You'll get that text soon." He rushed to take polaroids of the handwriting at various places in the notebook. When he was satisfied, he handed the original to the patiently waiting policewoman and gave her Garcia's instructions for transmitting its contents verbatim- or rather, near verbatim; Garcia tended to add in extra phrases that seemed both unnecessary and frequently wildly inappropriate. Then he returned to his handwriting analysis with relish.

It took only forty minutes for Garcia to return his call, and upon hearing the results, Reid let his favorite red pen tumble from his limp hand. _Looks like Gideon wins this one._

* * *

Despite his excitement, Reid took care to approach Hotch slowly and calmly. Two cases in, he was still not entirely sure of his aloof, hard-to-please superior. The man carried two guns, after all, and that was on a mellow day.

"Hey, Hotch?"

"Hmm?" he didn't look up from the canvases, but he turned his head very slightly to indicate that he was listening.

"I think we've got something important. I think-" He fell silent immediately when Hotch held up a finger.

"Reid, are you any good at interpreting art?"

"No."

"Well, take a look anyway. I think Samson Blythe might have been deeply closeted."

"Oh," said Reid in a small voice. Hotch glanced up in surprise at his colleague's obvious disappointment.

"Do you disagree?"

"No, not at all. I was just coming to tell you the same thing." Reid shuffled, feeling slightly silly. It had taken him, Sergeant Kimmel, and Garcia and her considerable computing power to figure out what Hotch had discovered by looking at a few pictures. _I guess that's why he gets to boss me around._

Agent Hotchner rose to his feet and dusted his knees.

"Oh thank God. I was really out on a limb," he remarked, smiling at Reid, who, stunned, tried to remember whether he had ever seen Hotch's teeth before. "How did you figure it out?"

"I found Helena's encoded journal. That's pretty much the only useful tidbit, though. Even in her own diary she plays things pretty close to the chest. It looks like they had a happy marriage before that. They were thinking about trying for kids. Then she writes that she thinks Samson's gay and she's going to confront him about it, and that's the last entry."

"Is it dated?"

"Yeah. It's the night before she disappeared."

"Well before he was murdered. So whatever happens during that final confrontation drives her away and then… what? She bides her time for nearly a year before coming back for revenge? That's a little far fetched."

"Those kills took a lot of planning. I can see her taking a breather, figuring out what she needs, then coming back and practicing before going for her true target."

"But Gideon's theory was predicated on revenge for a sexual assault. This is the opposite."

"We've seen plenty of sexual attacks by male killers that were catalyzed by rejection by the object of their desire. Notably, Bundy."

Hotch conceded reluctantly, but his unease continued. He couldn't help but feel that the team had fixated on a suspect too quickly.

"Let's get Garcia checking for the possibility that the other victims were also struggling with their homosexuality."

"She's got people on it. Gideon and Flynn are interviewing friends and family of the victims and I've told them to float the possibility."

"How's that going so far?"

"Not well. Turns out that a lot of them are pretty old-school Judeo-Christian and not very receptive to anything north of zero on the Kinsey scale."

"Huh." Hotch felt another niggling idea at the back of his mind, but he couldn't quite pin it down. "Have you finished the handwriting angle?" Hotch asked. At the question, Reid lit up with enthusiasm.

"I don't know about "finished" per se. I could spend days on just her lower zone." Morgan burst out laughing from across the apartment. Reid looked at him in confusion, apparently ignorant of his suggestive phrasing. He shook his head and switched seamlessly into lecture mode.

"This handwriting is extraordinarily informative. She writes fully in cursive, which is rare. Connected letters indicate a strong, logical mind, but cursive this perfect suggests that she had a strict, traditional education in her formative years. That might correlate with the leftward slant of her letters, which indicates defiance and resentment of authority.

"Like I said, she's logical and analytical, probably highly intelligent. Her upper zone is extremely long, which means that she's heavily influenced by thought .

"If you look at the pressure of the hand, you'll see that the subject is prone to extremity; she's emotional, sensual, and vital. The sensory part is backed up by the large loops in the lower zone," he indicated lowercase 'g's and 'y's, "which indicate a strong physical drive and probably a voracious sexual appetite. But the mid-zone-which represents emotional influence-is proportionally exceptionally small and the letters are angular. Her emotions are strong, but tightly repressed. Coupled with the acute angle of the slant, I might even venture to suggest a childhood trauma at the hands of an authority figure. "

"Fits the profile. Anything else?"

"Yeah. She loved her husband." Hotch started. That assertion was quite unlike the objective Dr. Reid.

"How do you figure?"

"All those attributes I just named? Well, when she writes notes to Samson Blythe, her mid zone becomes significantly larger, the slant is almost upright, and and the lines themselves start wandering upwards, indicating optimism. It's the typographical equivalent of lighting up when someone enters a room." _Well, at least that's consistent with what I remember._

"Well, if they weren't in love with each other, they were at the very least fascinated. Helena never stops dominating his paintings, and she never appears in a negative capacity, as far as I can tell. Do you think she could have killed him?" Hotch asked. He was still struggling to reconcile the charming barista in Philadelphia with the violent murderer in D.C. Reid considered the question for several seconds, biting the inside of his cheek.

"I don't know. Maybe. She's intensely infatuated with him. If he decided to leave her, I could see her snapping. People with tightly repressed emotions can be some of the most dangerous when they finally lose control. And the violence of the murders does point to a crime of passion."

"And the others?"

"She's smart. If only Samson had been killed, she would have been the primary suspect straight away. If I wanted to kill my husband and deflect blame, I'd throw in some red herrings so that the narrative didn't point to me."

"And brutally kill so many extra people?"

"Maybe. If I were twisted enough."

"Either way, we obviously we need to find this woman. Get Garcia on it."

"She already is. It looks like Helena Blythe has done a very professional job of disappearing, though. Even the CIA can't seem to find her."

Hotchner swore under his breath. It would be another very long night.

* * *

It was 10:00 when Hotch finally crept into bed. He leaned over to kiss Haley's cheek, then let his head hit the pillow hard. In spite of his best efforts, he couldn't seem to shake the image of Helena Blythe-well, Helena Benedict-seven years ago, when she had served him an excellent drink and teased him about his nickname. He remembered the light in her eyes when Sam Blythe had walked into the shop. He remembered her intoxicating smile and the laughter inherent in her warm, smokey voice. That lovely girl, a murderer? It still seemed impossible. But exhaustion had finally begun to do the work for him, and a sleepy fog mercifully set about crowding the case out of his mind. It was then, of course, that his phone began to ring enthusiastically.

" _Fuck._ " Aaron Hotchner was not a man prone to profanity, but really. _Fuck._ He reached over and flipped open his goddamned phone. "Hotchner." It came out as a hoarse snarl.

"Woah. Sorry, Hotch. Were you sleeping?" Garcia's voice was implausibly cheerful for this time of night.

"Someone had better be dying."

"Be careful what you wish for, chief. But I do have something delicious for you. It might even convince you to spare my life. I found her."

"Blythe? How?!"

"Do you really want a highly technical, legally questionable explanation right now?"

"Fair enough. No. Where is she?"

"Looks like she's hiding out in Chicago under the name Vivian Grant. Looks like she's shacking up with a Russian mobster. Alexander Volkoff, son of patriarch Arkady Volkoff."

"Could she have been in D.C. for the murders?"

"Easily. I don't have any record of her commuting, but this girl slips between cracks and blends into multitudes like a drop of water."

"Tell Reid to meet me at the airstrip in an hour."

"Yes siree-bob."

"And Garcia?"

"Yup?"

"Good work."


	2. Meanwhile

**April 25, 2004**

 **Chicago, ILL**

"We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

-Kurt Vonnegut

The thick, obfuscating air carried the mutterings and chatterings of the various clusters of men back to the stage. The redhead with the microphone might as well have been an especially voluptuous piece of furniture as they discussed their unsavory business transactions in rapid Russian. She finished her last song with a jazzy flourish, smiled graciously in response to the raucous applause, wolf-whistles, and catcalls, and murmured a demure, atrociously-pronounced "spasibo," and stepped down from her pedestal.

The moment her comically high-heeled, sparkling shoe touched the filthy floor of the speakeasy, the singer was accosted by several hopeful regulars, clamoring for her attention. _Animals._

" _Kotik,_ come sit on my knee and bring me luck. You always turn the game in my favor."

"Ignore him, Vivian, _lapochka._ Let me buy you one of those sugar drinks you love so much."

"Such a lovely performance, _zvyozdozchka moya._ A voice like honey and velvet."

She held up a hand and smiled.

"Thank you so much, gentlemen. I'll watch a game or two, but if I am to be fair to all of you, I can't favor one player. Your luck is your own, darlings." There was a collective groan of disappointment. The largest and most bearded man wrapped an arm around her waist.

"If you won't choose, then, a night of passion for the biggest winner?" he hazarded, grinning down at her. She lowered her eyes and giggled. _Jesus fucking Christ, how does he manage to smell like a rotting carcass and a burning building at the same time?_

"Igor Andreivich, you know better than that. What would Alexei say if he knew how you were talking to me? I will bestow one kiss, and it will be to the one who loses the most. That way I'll know which of you loves me more than money." As she spoke, she raised a finger and tweaked his nose before maneuvering deftly out of his grip. Igor brayed with laughter. He gestured to the other men, who abandoned their respective games and pulled together several tables. One man dragged over a bar stool for the coveted Vivian, who thanked him with a coy smile.

Within a minute, almost every man in the bar was seated or gathered around a single, central game. Those who were not playing watched and conversed quietly on the outskirts. The singer sat in the midst of the crowd, surveying the game and letting the various exchanges wash over her.

A few rounds in, the players began bantering. The contents of the repartee began as dull insults and cursing, but as the competition for dominance became more aggressive, business talk seeped in, safely encoded in Russian. The youngest, most inexperienced _shestyorka,_ Grigori Bragin, was the biggest talker. To Vivian's annoyance, he was also the least informed. He blustered at length about the bank robberies that he had coordinated. _Old news, Grisha. Please shut up._

" _Oh please, that's small change. What did you bring in from those, a few thousand? You barely cover your own cost, Grisha."_ Finally, Igor was speaking. The young upstart's prattling had set him on edge, baited him to establish dominance. _So you_ are _useful for something._

Grisha's hackles rose at the other man's dismissal. Vivian watched the cards with a rapt expression, careful not to betray any sign of understanding the ongoing argument.

" _Oh yeah? What makes you so special, then, old man? You don't bring in any money, you're just the boss's personal lapdog."_ There was a chorus of uproarious laughter from the younger men, but the more experienced members of the congregation shot each other uncomfortable, knowing glances. Vivian looked around the table, feigning confusion at the sudden fugue.

"Did somebody win?" she asked innocently, earning herself several fond chuckles and endearments, and one muttered " _dumb slut."_

"No, _mishka,_ just a little fool running his mouth off," Igor looked up at her with a fond smile, but it did not reach his eyes. _That's odd. I thought he adored me._

They returned to the game, and the discussion escalated.

" _If you want to know my importance, you'll have to start earning a little more status. Arkady Ivanovich doesn't let just anyone visit his menagerie."_

 _So. Igor manages the ring. Good to know. He won't be stupid enough to tell me where they are, though. He's a cunning bastard._

" _Menagerie?"_ demanded Grisha, fuming now. " _What are you talking about?"_

 _The little whelp is going to get himself sliced to pieces,_ she reflected indifferently. Then: _Since when did knowledge like that stop bothering me? He's an idiot and a crook, but he deserves it a lot less than most of the psychopaths in this room._

Partly to defuse tension, partly because the affectation she had assumed to play her part had grown into a full-fledged addiction, Vivian pulled out a cigarette and put it between her lips. Immediately, every man in her vicinity produced a lighter. She smiled and leaned forward, allowing a young _krysha_ the honor. She raised her eyes to his and treated him to a slow, silken smile. He blushed under her gaze.

The game continued as she she blew smoke rings across the room, looking bored. She tried to relax the tension in her body as she waited for Igor to answer his youthful challenger, but he only shot the kid a pitying look and changed the subject, speaking in English now.

"Vasil Antonovich tells me that you've been helping him with paperwork, _kotik."_ He spoke affectionately, but when he looked up at Vivian from across the table, his expression was suddenly shrewd.

 _Fuck. Is Vasil under suspicion now?_ She nodded eagerly, her eyes lighting up with girlish enthusiasm.

"Yes, he lets me do the numbers for the reports-the English ones, anyway. It keeps me busy when you boys are too busy to pay attention to me."

"I am glad that you have an occupation. Perhaps you ought to take a position in Arkady's offices." Igor's English was extraordinarily formal and heavily accented, as though he had learned it exclusively from British literature.

"I would love to! Would you recommend me, darling?" Her excitement now was genuine, though her motivations were-she hoped-concealed.

"If only you spoke Russian, _kotik,_ " he said, watching her closely, " I would be glad to have an assistant with your… wonderful attributes. As it is, if you are serious about working for Arkady, I will find you a position." She smiled her brightest smile and hurried around the table to kiss his bristly cheek, as though she hadn't noticed his scrutiny.

"Oh, thank you, Igor!" _Calm down, woman, He doesn't know anything._ "You won't regret it!"

The game dragged on and ended without revealing any more useful information. A speckled youth, who had managed to lose not only every penny he had, but also his Rolex, a valuable gold signet ring, and a diamond ring meant for his would-have-been bretrothed, hurried forward to claim his kiss. She rose to the tips of her toes and kissed his nose.

"Save the rest of that eagerness for your girl, darling," she advised him, smiling sweetly. Then, wading through the sea of grasping, greedy hands and spirited catcalls- _God, I wish I_ didn't _speak Russian-_ she vanished into her dressing room.

* * *

Standing in front of her sumptuous vanity table, Helena Blythe stepped out of her preposterous shoes, wiped off copious layers of makeup, removed the heavy diamond drops from her ears and throat, and shed the slinky, low-backed dress, sloughing off the character of Vivian Grant like a snake's skin.

She leaned against the wall, willing her heart to stop hammering and contemplating her next move. If Igor really did suspect her, then she needed to get herself and her informants out and under police protection as quickly as possible. If he didn't, however… then this was the opportunity she had been waiting for.

She checked the clock on the wall. 2:30 am. _It won't do me any good to think about this now. If they kill me in my sleep, well, so it goes._

Despite her resolution, her mind raced through the possibilities as she dressed in a flowing floral dress that Alexei liked. Her vivid imagination conjured horrifying images of exactly what Igor might do if he knew who she was. She thought of gentle Katya. _No matter what happens to me, they'll do worse to her. And every minute she suffers at their hands will be my fault._

Quietly, she snuck out the back door and melted into the darkness, her conscience snapping at her heels all the way home.

* * *

Alexei woke late into the morning to the bracing aroma of strong coffee drifting through the bedroom door. His foggy, uncomplicated thoughts registered pleasure and anticipation, but little else. He stretched out and closed his eyes, listening intently. Sure enough, warm strands of Vivian's voice came floating from the kitchen, wrapping around him and filling him with boyish joy. He bounded out of bed and into the kitchen to find his girl bustling around the kitchen, dressed in his favorite dress, copper hair braided over her shoulder. At the sound of his heavy footfall, she turned and gave him a dazzling smile.

"Darling," she murmured, rushing forward to kiss him ardently. "I missed you last night." She pulled back and looked at him with gentle reproach. "I thought you were going to watch my performance." He pulled her in again and she yielded immediately.

"I'm sorry, my dove," he said, burying his nose into the crook of her neck. "You know how my work tires me. But," he continued, in a tone that he knew she would recognize. She did not disappoint: her eyes lit up and a smile began to supersede her pout, "I think I have a way to make it up to you. Cover your eyes."

She obeyed with alacrity, and he hurried to the door to fish his offering from the pocket of his coat. He pressed it into her small, white hand. She opened her eyes and gasped in astonishment and joy.

"Oh Alexei, it's so lovely! You spoil me, darling. It's too much." But she was already hastening to a mirror to admire the glittering ruby necklace against her ample white decolletage. He followed her and fastened the clasp for her, then wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck and back, fingers fumbling with the buttons of her dress. She giggled coquettishly. "Don't you want coffee first?" she asked, turning around and pressing up against him, hands finding his chest.

"No."

* * *

Vivian Grant spent several ecstatic hours wearing only the flaming rubies that her lover had brought back to her. Helena Blythe spent them in a silent panic. Her calls to Vasil and Katya had gone unanswered, and now she was trapped without information until Alexei had his fill of her. She channeled her anxiety and tension into their vigorous love making until, finally, the man fell back on the bed, thoroughly spent.

"You are spectacular, Vivian," he panted, propping himself up on his elbows and watching her carry in a tray, the breakfast he had interrupted beautifully arranged upon it. Vivian shot him a shy smile, overtaken as usual by a wave of timidity after asserting herself sexually. _Because that's what you want, you hirstute chauvinist. Lady in the streets, freak in the sheets, as they say._

"Is the food still alright?" she asked him anxiously. "I hope it reheated properly."

She found her fingers toying with the necklace, tracing the facets of the crimson stones that lay like drops of blood on her chest. _Jesus. Melodramatic much? Still... I've seen this atrocity somewhere._ She filed the inquiry away in the back of her mind.

"It's perfect." Again, he kissed her, and Helena sensed the danger that he might be winding up for another round. She cast around for some distraction

"Oh! Igor Andreivich said that he might be able to find me a position in your father's business! Isn't that lovely, darling? We could work together!" His expression of displeasure was plain to see. It was a delicate balance to preserve exactly the right amount of jealousy and mistrust between the two men.

"I thought that you were already helping Vasil with the bookkeeping. And you perform at The Casanova Club. What do you need another job for?" _Oof. Definitely too much jealousy._

"Oh! I don't. But I want to be a part of your family, Alexei. Everyone in your family works for your father," she pointed out, eyes wide and guileless. _Careful. Don't want him to propose._ But Alexei softened and smiled at her, brushing a stray curl away from her face.

"Let's stick to Vasil for now. Igor Andreivich is not a nice man, Vivian. You're sweet and innocent, you can't imagine what that man is capable of."

"Then you should come to my performances! He's always there and he frightens me. Come protect me tonight, baby." _No, seriously. Please come prevent me from being gunned down in seven inch heels. I don't want to die in that outfit._

"I wish I could, Vivian, but I'm leaving on a work trip in a few hours." At this, Helena's heart plummeted instantly. It must have shown on her face, because he chuckled and kissed her lovingly.

"You'll miss me?"

"Oh yes." It was the first sincere thing she had said in weeks. "What will I do without my champion?"

"It's only a few days, my dove. I'll bring you back something sparkly." Vivian remained sulky, so that he had to coax her back to him. Helena's mind raced again. She needed to find Vasil. If Alexei was gone, she was unprotected and so were her people. Finally, she yielded and kissed him. Considering her options, she lay back against his chest.

"Darling?" she asked casually.

"Hmmmm?"

"Do you know where Vasil is today? I've got some spreadsheets to finish and I'll be at the Club all night, so I had better do them after you leave this evening."

"I saw him yesterday at The Empire. He's very busy at this time of year." When she did not smile, he relented. "Would you like me to find him for you." She rewarded him with a grin.

"Yes please."

* * *

At 5:00 that evening, Vasil met her at their usual place, a small pizzeria well outside of Arkady Volkoff's territory. He looked pale and drawn and continually wiped his face with his silk handkerchief. As usual, they spoke French.

"Lenotchka, thank God you're alright," he gasped, rising to his feet and kissing her forehead tenderly. "Sit, sit. How are you?"

"I'm fine, darling," she reassured him, settling down across the table and taking a voracious bite of the pizza he had ordered. "I was just worried for you. I think Igor suspects one or both of us."

"It's you," he sighed. "He came around The Empire this morning asking about you. I wanted to send you a message, but I didn't know how."

"What was he asking?"

"Whether you'd ever been given access to the documents pertaining to the less than legal side of Volkoff's business. Whether I'd noticed you do anything out of character. I don't think it's occurred to him that I might be involved."

"I wouldn't be too sure of that, Vasil. The man's ex-KGB; if he suspected you, he'd be able to hide it."

Vasil made a sound similar to one that a dying duck might make. He wiped his forehead again.

"What are we going to do? If Igor finds out who you are… what you've asked of me…" He was going off the rails. Helena mustered every ounce of the kind, reassuring persona she played for him. She interrupted his ramping panic by seizing his hands tightly in hers. He gazed into her eyes, desperate for relief.

"I will get you out of this, Vasil. If Igor brings me in for questioning, I have a list of names to give him and you're not on it. Now: hand me the paperwork so that we keep our cover, go buy a box of pastries next door for your wife, and go home. I'll call you at 9:00 tomorrow morning. If you don't hear from me, gather your family and turn yourself into the police. Give them my name and tell them to call Andi Swann at the FBI. She'll take care of you."

The man was taking deep, shuddering breaths, his eyes still fixed on her. _Don't you dare pity him, Blythe. He was complicit in everything Volkoff did for years._

"Vasil, you've been so brave," she murmured, leaning in. "And you've been like a father to me in this nest of vipers." She had said the magic word. His shoulders straightened and his hands, still in her grasp, stopped trembling. He was still frightened, but he could have courage for Lena, a surrogate for the daughter he had disappointed. "Be brave for me one more time, darling."

"For you, Lena, the world."

* * *

Helena's shift at the Casanova didn't start until midnight, for which she was grateful. Before Alexei had left, she had asked him the question she desperately needed an answer to.

"How's your mother, Alexei? How's Kat?"

"You're a sweet girl, Vivian. She just left for California for a few days. Father thought that the sun would do her some good; you know how fatigued she becomes."

 _Thank god._ She felt some of the tension leave her shoulders. If the soft-hearted older woman had been found out…. well, it would be near impossible for Helena to live with that. Katya was as close to innocent as it got around here. _Certainly more innocent than you, Mata Hari._

Now, she sat in Alexei's apartment, paralyzed by the choice before her. The obvious choice, to request extraction, seemed impossible to her. To give a year of her life to a cause, then to withdraw before the game was over… Helena realized to her dismay that she would rather die than abandon her mission. _Idiot nobility. When have I ever been prone to idiot nobility?_

Distracted, she began to flip through the documents that Vasil had brought her, expecting only the most innocuous of the Volkoff tax returns. What she saw instead made her heart leap into her throat. The files were in Russian, and detailed with fearsome precision the path through which the mobster laundered his money. _No wonder he was so jumpy. Looks like I'm not the only one suffering a bout of idiot nobility today._

She lit a cigarette and kept reading, drinking in the smoke and information, seeking the one tiny detail that she had been searching for, and that would make this mission worth her life and Vasil's. But either it wasn't there or the details were buried too deeply for her to find it on her own. She frowned and leaned back. Whatever she did had to happen fast and silently. Without knowing if this file contained exactly what she needed, she could not yet come in from the cold; she simply had to transmit the information to the CIA quickly before diving back in.

 _Before tonight,_ the vicious realist in her remarked. _Igor might not wait for proof before he kills you. Your shift starts at midnight; he may very well shoot you the second you walk onto that stage._

 _Fuck it, let's have a drink. For tomorrow we die._


	3. Curtains

"Nothing is more sad than the death of an illusion." -Arthur Koestler

 **11:15 PM, April 26, 2004**

 **Chicago, IL**

She knew that something was off the moment she slipped through the back door and into her dressing room. The air was thinner, and deadly quiet. _Easy, girl. Best thing to do is keep your cover._

In a haze of panic, she began her transformation.

First, the dress. She chose one that concealed her ankles (and the small revolver strapped to the right one). It slithered over her body lovingly, the venom-green silk tracing her figure and flaring out dramatically at her knees.

The hair. When she pulled out the clip that strained to keep them in place, her red curls tumbled down around her face and down her back. She tamed it slightly with some excessively expensive lotion (a gift from Alexei) that smelled mildly of neroli and roses. Otherwise, she let it run wild.

The adornments. Tonight she chose a set of emeralds that Igor himself had brought her from God knew where. They dripped from her ears and throat like beads of poison.

The face. This always took a while. She concealed her freckles, shaded her cheekbones, lengthened her lashes, and painted her lips a bright, bloody red. Finally, she drew a birthmark above her lip, the last shameless cliche of the hackneyed, used-up Vivian Grant.

Gazing at the glittering, unrecognizable beauty in the mirror, she realized that it bothered her slightly that she would die as someone else. Oddly, nothing else did.

She didn't think about Samson. Or rather, she thought she didn't.

Her eyes found the clock. 12:00. _Showtime._

She ascended the steps from her room to the main stage, paused for a moment to remember the songs for tonight, then stepped out onto the stage before she had a chance to think about anything else. The lights directed at the stage blinded her for a moment, but when she could see again, her fears were confirmed.

The room was empty save for one hulking figure.

"Hello, Igor."

"It is lovely to see you again, _kotik._ " She inclined her head and smiled graciously. She couldn't see his face, but his harsh voice was warm and conversational.

"Private show tonight?"

"If you wouldn't mind."

"Of course." She glanced behind her. There were no musicians tonight. It was just her, standing alone and exposed on her pedestal. She began to sing, but she wasn't sure what. She only knew that her voice didn't tremble and her smile never faltered. She performed perhaps better than she ever had before; her voice had never been extraordinary, but tonight it did not fail her.

"Another."

She sang again, enjoying herself now. A rush of fierce fatalism tore through her. He knew what she was, and she didn't give a damn. And if she got the chance, she'd take him down with her.

She sang her entire set, taking savage pleasure in her final _danse macabre_. For a full hour, she let her death wish carry her, ecstatic, through song after song. Her eyes remained on her impassive captor as his features began to resolve themselves. He looked relaxed and appreciative. When finally she fell silent, he applauded wholeheartedly.

"Wonderful, _kotik._ Simply wonderful. You are an artist."

"Thank you, Igor."

"You understand that I am not speaking of your singing, of course." He smiled wryly. _He's really going to ham this up, isn't he?_ "No, your voice leaves much to be desired. A pleasant timbre, to be sure, but ultimately pedestrian."

"I'm sorry to hear it."

"Not to worry. You have other talents. Do you mind if we speak Russian, by the way? English is such a vulgar language."

"You may speak Russian if you don't want a reply from me, darling."

" _Oh kitten, aren't you tired of pretending by now?"_

 _Joke's on you,_ she thought bitterly. _Pretending is the only thing that never gets old._

" _Do you want me to tell you how I knew?"_ he continued. _That would be nice._

"Igor, please, I don't understand a word you're saying," Vivian pleaded. "Just tell me what you want and it's yours."

" _That lying bitch betrayed you, kitten,"_ he sneered, watching her face for a reaction. " _She came to me yesterday and told me the terrible, treacherous things she had done for you. She begged forgiveness from Arkady."_

Every thought in Helena's mind was extinguished. She was paralyzed.

" _That's right. Do you want to know what happens to whores who disappoint Arkady Ivanovich Volkoff, kitten?"_ Whatever expression showed on Helena's face seemed to please Igor immensely. " _Grisha, would you bring in Madame Volkoff, please?"_

 _No._

The young thug walked in, carrying a large duffle bag. Igor accepted it with a courtesy that contrasted comically with his barbaric appearance.

 _ **No.**_

Slowly, calmly, he opened the bag and began laying its contents out on the table.

First, a foot. Then an arm. A hand. Numbly, Helena noticed Katya's elaborate gold wedding ring on one of the few unmutilated fingers. She watched as the pieces of her informant were laid out one by one, each covered in burns and punctures. Igor had not been imaginative in his torture, but one does not need imagination to destroy another person.

Finally, the head. Helena looked into the glassy brown eyes, as she had done so many times when she reassured Katya that she would be safe.

 _You are under my protection, Katya. I swear that no harm will come to you, Katya. Don't panic, Katya. I'll keep you safe, Katya._

When she looked up at Igor, she mustered a smile. When she spoke, it was in fluent Russian.

" _Alright, Igor. Let's talk."_

" _Finally."_

* * *

Hotch and Reid slept fitfully for the two-hour plane ride. There was nothing to say and nothing to do. Garcia had briefed them on the way to the airstrip.

"Okay, it looks like she's been working as a performed at an old-timey speakeasy run by the Russian mob. It'll be full of gangsters when you arrive, so your best bet is to wait until morning and get her at her apartment. I'm sending directions to your cell."

"Thanks, Garcia," he said mechanically. He was too exhausted to think at all. All he could do was follow instructions.

When he arrived at the hotel, he passed out on the large, soft bed, and knew no more until 5:00 the next morning.

* * *

They sat across from one another at the center table with two tumblers of expensive Scotch. At that distance, Helena was engulfed again in the disorientingly powerful smell of death that always followed Igor. In the corner of the room, Grisha stood impatient and seemingly forgotten.

" _Tell me your name."_

" _Helena."_

" _CIA?"_

" _Yes."_ She sipped from her glass, feeling the bracing burn of the whiskey spread over her tongue.

" _You're here for Arkady?"_

" _For the girls."_

" _You can't save them."_

" _I have to try."_

" _Why?"_ he demanded, looking frustrated. " _I don't believe for a moment that you're a heroic person at your core."_ Helena shrugged.

" _I agree with you,"_ she admitted. " _I'm not a hero. Just a fairly good liar. But everyone needs a profession."_

" _Does that mean that you're open to other offers?"_ he asked, raising a brow. That surprised her. She had been sure that he would want to skip straight to the bloodletting.

As he waited for her answer, he moved to the bar and poured himself a

She considered her answer for a while. It seemed pointless to stall, but senseless to hurry things along. Quietly, she removed the revolver from its place at her ankle and, peeling the paper off a strip of adhesive that she had affixed to it, stuck the gun underneath the table. She moved smoothly enough that neither of the men seemed to notice. This done, she replied.

" _I don't see why not, though I'm damned if I know how you'd pay me."_

" _I have outrageous sums of money at my disposal,"_ he reminded her unnecessarily, gesturing at the finery she wore. " _Don't you enjoy the lifestyle, kitten?"_

" _To be perfectly honest with you, Igor, I've never liked owning things. A government salary was more than enough for my tastes."_

A ghastly grin broke out over Igor's twisted face.

" _You really are a perfect spy, aren't you? Your only real appetite is for betrayal."_

" _That's an excellent description."_

" _You know, Katya never told me who her contact was,"_ he remarked conversationally, and she felt a searing stab at her heart. " _I'll tell you how you gave yourself away, shall I? For future reference?"_

" _I'd be very interested to hear it."_

" _You know, I think, that I was KGB back in my day."_ She didn't answer. " _We used to train women like you. Beautiful, vicious creatures they were."_

" _What did you train them for?"_ she prompted with polite interest.

" _We showed them how to give men what they wanted. How to be their Dulcinea. It is amazing how a man will lie to himself when he meets the woman of his dreams. He becomes so vulnerable to her. You are everything I ever asked them to be. I may as well have created you myself."_

" _I'm flattered."_

" _Once I was on the lookout for a spy who could persuade a woman as loyal as Katerina to turn, it was quick work to find you, kitten. I only had to look for the spy that I would have sent."_

" _Did you tell Arkady?"_

" _No, I wanted to do the honors myself."_

" _So your offer still stands, then? You want me to be your… assistant?"_

" _Imagine my elation at the idea that you most likely did speak Russian after all. Now you are perfect, kitten. Except for one small problem, of course."_

" _What's that, Igor?"_

" _I do not believe that you will ever abandon your mission."_

" _Why not?"_

" _Because, meager salary aside, your job with the CIA gives you one thing that I can't."_

" _Oh?"_

" _A sense of self worth."_ She gazed at him in consternation. He was alarmingly accurate in his observations of her. " _Next to that, the offer of sparing your life must seem paltry. I don't think you are capable of giving it up."_

" _That's why you won't let me live."_

" _That's why."_ He looked genuinely displeased about it, as though he had been forced to throw away his ice cream cone prematurely.

" _Well, get on with it, then."_

" _Oh no, kitten. Death will be your reward. First, you need to earn it."_

* * *

 **Author's note: So I haven't had the best history about continuing stories consistently, but I am working on troubleshooting The Mortal Coil. I've noticed some narrative defects and am trying to decide how to handle the exposition. For those who are waiting for that story, I'll resume it soon. The story I want to tell with that one is compelling to me.**

 **This one is a result of me starting Criminal Minds and finding myself surprised and impressed by how well-conceived the main characters are. Given that the show is based on the psychology of crazed killers, this story will be correspondingly dark and interior. Violence (including sexual violence) will happen. I don't really enjoy writing it, so I'm trying to stick to the effect on the characters, rather than just gore.**

 **Helena Blythe is my attempt to write a character who, like the members of the BAU, is productive and admirable, but also irretrievably damaged. She's meant to be a foil for Hotch and a device for exploring the dark side that we occasionally get to see during the show.**


	4. Chekhov's Heel

"That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment." -Dorothy Parker

 **5:30 AM, April 27 2004**

 **Chicago, IL**

The apartment was empty when Hotch and Reid arrived. It was a large, spacious loft, decorated in bright, sunny colors. Now, like the cheerful studio in D.C., it was left abandoned.

"She's gone. Looks like someone packed in a hurry," said Reid breathlessly after a quick search of the apartment.

"We need to check the club she works at. It'll be empty now."

The drive was only five minutes, but it felt like an eternity to Hotch. He felt an unexplained sense of dread in his stomach. All he wanted was for this whole gruesome case to end, to go home to his wife and his bed and to sleep for days.

His phone rang as he drove, and he answered with his usual laconic "Hotchner."

"You haven't found her yet, have you?" Gideon sounded uncharacteristically agitated.

"No. We're headed to the Casanova Club now."

"Hotch, we were wrong."

"What?"

"I was completely wrong. She's not the unsub, but she is in terrible danger. Listen... "

Hotch and Reid listened, alarm rising in Hotch's chest. _We've got to find her before they do._

The Casanova Club did indeed appear to be deserted when they arrived. Hotch and Reid approached the blue door cautiously. They could hear nothing from the other side of the door.

Gun in hand, Hotch knocked, steeling himself. But there was no preparing for what he saw when the door was wrenched open.

* * *

Helena trembled and gasped, collapsed on her knees in the ashes and dust that covered the barroom floor. Her legs had given out five minutes ago and since then she had simply been kneeling, staring at the revolver lying in her blood-soaked hands in numb horror. All she felt was a dull, throbbing pain near her left eye.

 _How had this gone so wrong?_

She gazed around the room unseeingly, her eyes moving over the two bodies pushed up against the wall of the room.

Despite her profession, she had never killed before. Her eyes fixed on the head of Katerina, still set like a gruesome ornament upon the bar. Curiously, the sight of it, which had paralyzed her hours earlier, now braced her shattered nerves. It reminded her of the one thing she could still hope to salvage: Vasil and his wife were still waiting for her call, and by God she would get them out if it killed her.

Shakily, she dropped the gun and forced herself to her feet, kicking off her one remaining heel. The other lay soaked in the pool of blood next to the overturned table at which she and Igor had sat four hours ago. The table on which he had-

She cut herself off sternly. _Pull it together, girl. No time to sulk over things you can't change._

She approached the payphone at the far corner of her room and cursed as she realized that the dress she was wearing had absolutely no place to keep change. Glancing around, her eyes landed on the corpses.

 _Robbing the body of your rapist. New low, Blythe._

Gingerly, she reached into Igor's jacket pocket, averting her eyes from his contorted face and from the gaping hole in his neck.

 _There was nothing else you could do. It was you or him._

She fished a out a few quarters. Somehow, it disturbed her profoundly to think of the dead mobster carrying something as pedestrian as spare change. In death, he appeared more human to her than he ever had while he was living. Now that he posed no threat, the act of killing him corroded her humanity in retrospect.

She crossed back quickly to the phone, the silk train of her dress dragging through the pool of blood next to the hated table. Before her rampant conscience could paralyze her again, she picked up the receiver and began to dial. She was interrupted, however, by a rapping at the door.

 _Fuck._ That was all her mind had to offer. _Fuck fuck fuck._

Igor had told her that he had had closed the bar indefinitely. That no one would come until he told them to. Until it was too late for her.

Maybe he had invited some of his preferred thugs to share her? No, that wasn't his style. He had cut Grisha to death just for asking for a turn.

She had been lucky, really, that Igor had wasted so much time on the foolhardy lieutenant. That even as he destroyed her, he craved more power over her. She didn't feel lucky, though. She just wondered whether the blood could ever be washed entirely out of her skin.

Retrieving the gun, she approached the door slowly and pulled it open abruptly, holding the dainty little weapon in front of her like a lantern.

The face she saw was nothing she had ever expected. The voice she heard said words that filled her with so much surprise and relief that she could not move or speak.

"Helena, my name is Aaron Hotchner with the FBI. Lay down your weapon. You're safe."

* * *

Hotch stared at the blood-soaked creature that stood before him, looking like the ghost of a murdered jazz singer. He took in every excruciating detail of the woman before him in a split second. The youthful beauty of the girl he had met was marred by an ugly black bruise on her left cheekbone and blood splattered liberally over her shoulders and down her slinky green dress. She was barefoot, her hair a tangled mess of copper matted with red, and there were angry red bruises in the shape of enormous hands on her arms and neck. The sight of her inspired in him a surge of mingled pity for her and rage against her attacker, which he suppressed with difficulty. Neither would be of any use to her right then.

"Helena," he said, in his gentlest and most reassuring voice, "my name is Aaron Hotchner with the FBI." She stared up at him uncomprehendingly, a .22 caliber revolver held loosely in one small but miraculously steady hand. "Lay down your weapon. You're safe."

Her eyes stayed on his face, exploring it as though she had never seen another human being before.

"I remember you," she whispered, letting her arm fall limply by her side and the gun slip from her listless fingers. "I know your face."

Her knees gave out and he caught her as she crumpled, dropping his own gun as his right arm encircled her tiny waist. Everything about her was so small. How could they send such a fragile thing into that den of monsters?

"You're safe," he murmured again against her hair, which smelt of blood and orange blossoms. Pressing her forehead to his chest, she took great, shuddering breaths in his arms as though resurfacing from deep, cold water. "Are you alright?" he asked her after a moment, pushing her away slightly but keeping both hands around her waist to hold the girl up.

"Oh." She looked down to examine herself. She smiled weakly. "Yeah. Not my blood." She appeared suddenly reinvigorated.

"I need you to take me to a police station and bring in Vasil Antonovich Kashirin and his wife, Nina Guryevna. They live not far away and they'll be killed if we don't move fast." Her voice was suddenly forceful and assertive.

"Slow down. Our most pressing goal is to get you to a hospital." He still held her by her waist, but now it was to restrain her. Reid stepped forward from behind Hotch, making his way carefully into the the club's foyer and then the dark room beyond as Helena wrenched herself from Hotch's grip and frowned at him.

"I told you, the blood's not mine. Call a medic to patch me up at the precinct, but my injuries are superficial." When he didn't move, she sighed in frustration. "We need to get Vasil out before they figure out what happened here. It's only a matter of time before they realize who the moles were."

"Hotch?" Reid's voice as he called out from the depths of the Casanova was sharp and urgent. Hotch glanced down at the obstinate spy before him.

"Come on," she said. "You should see this."

As he entered, the smell of blood hit Hotchner like a blow to the head. It wiped out his senses for a moment. When he managed to look around, the scene before him froze the blood in his veins.

The mutilated head and appendages of an elderly woman were lain out as if for display on the bar. In the corner, the bodies of two men were slumped in pools of blood. One of the corpses, the younger one, looked as though he had been tortured for hours before he had finally been allowed to die. The other, a bearded behemoth, had suffered only one wound, which appeared to have punched bluntly through his carotid.

"The one with the beard is my work. The other two were his own."

Helena's voice, clear and cold, cut through the stench and the horror. She was surveying the destruction as though evaluating a mediocre art show, but Hotch sensed that her detached veneer was spread thin over a deep well of anguish.

"That woman?" She pointed at the severed head. "The one who's now serving as a decorative bust? She was one of my informants. He tortured her mercilessly before he finally beheaded her and hacked up the body. That's what will happen to Vasil and especially Nina if we don't recover them."

Hotch nodded, casting his eyes again over the carnage. This time, he noticed something new. One small, glittering woman's shoe. The long, severe point of the stiletto heel was soaked completely in blood. He looked up at her.

"You used your shoe?"

She nodded expressionlessly.

"Sometimes it pays to dress to the occasion."

* * *

Bound hand and foot to her chair, Helena had watched, helpless, as Igor finished off Grisha with a quick jab of his knife between the boy's ribs. The _shestyorka_ had shuddered one more time, cried out, and fallen back, finally, mercifully dead.

Then the man had turned slowly to look at his prize. Helena had dropped her head and let her tears flow freely over her cheeks. Broken. His hands had roamed over her already-violated body as he cut her ties and dragged her back to the table by her throat, setting her on it and reaching once again for his belt buckle. She had slumped sideways like a rag doll, one hand dangling down near her feet.

" _Poor kitten,"_ he had purred as he unzipped his trousers. " _A woman is nothing after she has been used up by a strong man. If you would just give up the names of the other agents, this could all be over."_

It was then that she had sprung up, back from the dead, her once-hated shoe held in her hand like a dagger. Before he could register what was going on, she had plunged the heel of the shoe into his neck. He had gasped and stumbled back, gaping at her uncomprehendingly. He had swung an arm out wildly, hitting her face squarely. Stars and had erupted before her eyes, sending her reeling and temporarily blinding her. When she could finally see again, Igor had died with a last, rattling breath in a pool of his blood.

* * *

Sitting in the back of Agent Hotchner's black SUV, a bag of ice over the bruised left side of her face, Helena leaned back and closed her eyes, breathing in and out as deeply as she could.

The relief that she had felt upon the arrival of the two agents had long since evaporated, leaving her with only dread and restless energy.

Hotchner had taken charge immediately, summoning a medic and calling the precinct, directing them to locate her informant. At her behest, they had recovered her-or rather, Vivian Grant's-overflowing jewelry box. At some point the previous night, Helena had remembered with a sickening clarity exactly where she had seen Alexei's ruby necklace before.

Then, guiding her by a gentle hand at her elbow, Aaron Hotchner had led her to the car, his gentle brown eyes fixed on her face, murmuring words of encouragement to her as they walked.

She reflected to herself that she had never liked anyone's voice quite as much as she liked his. It was low, gentle, and musical, with a current of authority running through it. Black velvet draped over steel. He had let his emaciated young partner drive the car and sat instead in the back seat with her, allowing her to lie back against his chest and wrap her fingers around his. He stroked her hair absently as they drove.

" _Safe."_

Still, even her aquiline protector could not drive away her urgent need to do something; to wade into the shambles of her mission and salvage that one, crucial fragment of information.

"Did you recover the documents?" she asked. If she could not forget, then she would act. She opened her eyes and tilted back her head to see a quizzical look on Hotchner's face.

"The… documents?" Her heart sank. Had they not arrived?

"Yeah, the ones I sent to Swann yesterday evening. Have they been analyzed yet? Do they have what we need?"

"I'm sorry, Helena, I haven't been brought up to speed on the status of your mission. You can call Agent Swann from the precinct."

Helena sat up suddenly, staring at him.

"You're not in Swann's division?" she demanded, the question coming out in a rather more accusatory tone than she meant it to. He shook his head apologetically.

"No, we're with the BAU. We were led to you through a case and we only found out that you were undercover an hour ago."

"Oh." She looked put out and slumped back onto him, wincing at the pain in her bruised ribs. "What does the Russian mob have to do with serial killers?"

"It wasn't the Russian mob that we were looking at," he replied reluctantly. "It was you." She looked ready to launch into a full interrogation, but he was not yet quite ready to tell the wartorn girl that lay in his arms about Samson's death. He held her gingerly, as though she were an injured bird in the palms of his hands. Nor did he want to ask her exactly what had happened to her in the six hours that she had spent with Igor Tikhonov in that room of horrors. The long rips in her once-sumptuous dress suggested a story that he did not want to accept. "We'll talk about it at the precinct, alright? Just rest for now." Apparently she was just tired enough to submit, because she nestled back against him and closed her eyes.

"Oh alright. If you insist." A small smile stole over her mouth for the first time since she had sat down at that damned table with Igor. It seemed so remote now. A lifetime ago. For the moment, Hotchner's strong arms kept the restlessness at bay. She realized suddenly how bone-tired she really was, just as her brain began shutting down all conscious thought. Her eyes fluttered, and she descended into blissful oblivion suddenly and without a fight.

* * *

He carried her into the offices of the BAU, careful not to wake her and provoke another flurry of activity.

It was an unexpected blessing that the department had two couches. He laid her down on one of them and smoothed her bloody curls out of her face. With her face in repose, he saw for the first time a hint of fresh-faced Helena Benedict showing through.

"Keep an eye on her, would you?" he asked a nearby female officer, who nodded and smiled at him.

"I'll take good care of her. You can stop hovering."

Hotch left her there, partly so that he didn't wake her with his phone calls, partly because when he stayed by her side, he found himself distracted and useless.

First, he called the medic and postponed her checkup. He had checked for concussion at the club and everything else could wait until she woke.

Next, he called Gideon and apprised him of the situation.

"Reid and I will stay in Chicago until this is resolved. We can work on the case remotely, right?"

" _Of course. Do what you have to. We've uncovered a few things about the unsub."_

"Could you call Reid? I need to get in touch with Helena's handler."

" _Aaron,"_ Gideon said, pulling him back. He sounded concerned.

"Yeah?"

" _Be careful. Don't get too invested in this girl."_

"We're involved now, Jason. I'll keep working our case, but I have to see this through."

" _I understand that, just keep your wits about you. Handling spies is slippery business."_

"I will. Thanks."

Finally, he called SSA Andi Swann. He had worked with her once on a trafficking case, but not since she had promoted to head her own unit.

" _Swann."_

"Agent Swann, this is Aaron Hotchner with the BAU."

" _Hotch, hey. Listen, I really can't talk right now-"_

"We've got Helena." Silence on the other end of the line. "We picked her up from the Casanova club half an hour ago. She'd been found out by one of Volkoff's brigadiers, Igor Tikhonov and had to fight her way out. We've got people recovering her informant now."

" _Oh thank god. She sent us a huge info dump yesterday and told us that she'd get in touch when she could, but that she needed radio silence until further notice. I was starting to fear the worst."_

"She's asleep now. But she wanted to know whether all the data she sent has been analyzed."

" _Not yet. Our analysts are crawling all over it. It's a lot to get through. You know that she sent the entirety of the financial records of Volkoff's primary business, the Empire, for the last three years? As well as her own notes from the beginning of her mission and the present? I wish I had half the recruiting skill of the CIA."_

"They've got good people. We can collude later on how to poach some of them for the FBI."

" _You work on Blythe. I'd kill to get her on my unit."_ Hotch grinned. She had a point. He wondered idly what it would take to tempt Helena Blythe into the BAU.

"I'll call you when she wakes up. Keep me posted."

" _Thanks, Hotch. Take care of her."_

"Will do."

* * *

When Hotch found Reid, the young man had managed to commandeer several evidence boards and plastered them with details of the D.C. killer.

"Oh there you are. Gideon has some fascinating insights on our unsub."

"So I heard. Can you fill me in?"

"So it looks like we're seeking two people, a dominant and a submissive. The submissive has medical knowledge but probably very little physical strength. The dominant exhibits a lot of rage against the victims, so there's something about them that we're missing."

"Do you think it could be faith-based?"

The two men jumped and spun around. Helena stood behind them, eyes flitting between the victim's photos.

"You shouldn't be awake," Hotch told her reflexively, glancing back at the board. In a rare moment of sensitivity, Reid had not put up Samson Blythe's picture. She waved a dismissive hand.

"Nightmares. Tell me about the case."

"You really shouldn't be working this one."

"Help me out here, man. I have to sit around until the evidence is analyzed? I'll go bug nuts." Hotch relented. Her version of "bug nuts" may very well be incredibly frightening. She already looked like something out of Sweeney Todd.

"Why do you say it's faith-based?"

"Well, the one on the far left I've met. Matthew O'Malley. Nice guy, but increasingly conflicted. My husband-Samson-went to church with him." She looked deeply sad staring at the young man's photo, but kept her tone airy.

"Went?"

"They were both in the process of leaving their faith. It can be pretty traumatic, especially with a congregation that strict. They were full-on Saint Bartholomew's Day Catholic." Reid chuckled and Hotch shot him a questioning look. That was all it took to shoot the good doctor into a didactic frenzy.

"The Saint Bartholomew's Day Massacre was an out-of-control slaughter of Protestants in Paris launched by an assassination attempt at the wedding of the Catholic Marguerite-Margot-of Valois to the huguenot, Henri of Navarre-"

"Got it. Thanks."

"That one in the middle is toying with a silver crucifix. Probably also struggling with his faith. The one on the right? Well… he just looks Irish and miserable. I'm sure you boys know enough about James Joyce to see what that means."

"That's a valuable piece of victimology."

"How were they killed?"

"Beaten, castrated, then sexually assaulted and left to bleed out," Reid answered before Hotch could elbow his protruding ribs.

"Jesus, that's horrible. Poor Matt." She looked so horrified that Hotch had to fight the urge to wrap a protective arm around her shoulders. "That's a hell of a lot of anger. Homophobia, d'you think? I know for a fact that Matt was considering coming out."

"How?"

"Well… let's just say that I had inside information. Last I checked, he hadn't told anyone except his partner, though."

"Helena, was he involved with your husband?" Hotch asked gently. She tore her eyes away from the photo to stare at him in wonder.

"How the fuck did you figure that one out?"

 _Why, why, why does it have to be my job to tell her?_

"Helena…" he trailed off, lost for words. She seemed to begin to understand what he was struggling to say.

"These… these aren't the only victims, are they?" she asked in a trembling voice.

"No, they aren't," he agreed, helpless. He moved forward automatically, but she stumbled back, her delicate frame shaking violently.

"That's why you were looking into me. Because Samson was killed."

"Yeah."

"Did he die like them? Was he tortured like that?" Her voice was so quiet that it was barely audible over the buzz of the station.

"I'm afraid so. I'm so sorry, Helena." For the second time that day, he rushed to catch her as her knees buckled.

"Oh God," she whispered, "oh God why wasn't I there? Why did I leave him there to be slaughtered?"

"There was nothing you could have done. If you had been there, they would have killed you too." She just shook her head, wringing her hands distractedly.

"He begged me to stay. He told me that he couldn't face his family without me. I told him I would stay with him and then I just… took off while he was at work. Begged for this fucking assignment. I didn't even say goodbye. Not even a goddamned note."

"Helena, we need to ask you some questions," said Reid, poking his head out from behind Hotch. "They might help us find the people responsible."

" _Reid,_ " hissed Hotch. But Helena seemed to respond better to this than to reassurance. Her tremors stopped and she focused her tear-filled eyes on the young doctor.

"Yeah. Yeah, what do you need to know?"

Reid was already dialing Garcia. He handed the phone to the young widow, who took it with a suddenly steady hand.

"By the way, I probably do have a big, hairy alibi for any night you care to name in the last year," she joked feebly. "I don't think he'd respond very well if you asked him about it, though."

" _You've reached Garcia, the Great and Powerful. You in the market for a heart, Tin Man?"_

"Sorry, wonderful wizard, just a moderately wicked witch here. Helena Blythe. I hear you have some questions for me."

" _Oh golly! It's been a real roller coaster with you, babe. First you were just a widow, then you were a murder suspect, now a latter-day Mata Hari-"_

"Garcia." Hotch snapped through the phone.

" _Wow, that was super insensitive. Sorry."_

"That's fine, darling. Hotchner here doesn't understand humor as a coping mechanism. What do you need to know?"

" _First, do you have a password for the desktop computer at your old apartment? Your husband had hella security measures on that thing."_ At this, Blythe smiled warmly, as though at a pleasant memory.

"He was a cybersecurity contractor. Always ran circles around me in our CS classes in college. Honestly, he's probably changed it. If he has, he's likely to have generated it using a Markov chain based on some randomly selected translation of a Sophocles play, so you're fuck. Last I knew, though, it was 34223606171996."

" _Woah. Is that totally random?"_

"No, I made him choose something I had a shot at remembering. My measurements followed by the day we met."

" _34-22-36? Damn, girl. Way to go."_ Helena chuckled. Anguish didn't seem to stick to her naturally.

"Thanks. You sound pretty luscious yourself. Anything else?"

" _Yeah, do you know anything about a site called "The Apostate's Sanctuary?"_

"I think I've heard of it. Sort of an online support community for people thinking of leaving the Catholic Church. It can be rough. Some people lose everyone in their lives."

" _Looks like Sam was pretty active on it. Do these usernames mean anything to you? Fiddlesticks42 and AugustineAwakened?"_

"The first one sounds like it might belong to Matt. Big Douglas Adams fan, and he tended to avoid swearing by using substitutes like 'fiddlesticks.' No clue about the other one, except that Saint Augustine was a famous convert to Christianity."

" _Thanks babe. I'll call Reid if I need anything else from you."_

"Good luck."

Helena sat down at the table and frowned.

"So what else do we know?"

"Do you really want to work on this?"

"Do you really expect me to pass up a chance to catch the bastard who killed my best friend?" She paused. "Although I wouldn't object to a shower first," she admitted upon further reflection, sniffing her hair and wincing.

* * *

 **Author's note: I recognize that the story so far has been quite chaotic, leaving little chance for the characters to breathe and interact like normal human beings. I'm hoping, though, that Helena's personality is starting to come through a bit: a survivor in the heat of the moment, but melancholic and maybe a little suicidal when she lets herself sulk. I'd love feedback on anything about the story, but the characterization especially.**


	5. Coal Mine

"Truth doesn't always heal a wounded soul."-Maxim Gorky

Hotch watched Blythe leave with Lucinda Potts, the young policewoman to whom he had spoken earlier. She had scoffed at him when he asked her whether there was a shower and a change of clothes that Helena could borrow.

"Honey, she can come to my place. It's just around the corner."

"That's very generous. Thank you."

"Is it true that she killed Igor Tikhonov?" Hotch nodded in confirmation.

"With her shoe," he elaborated. Potts gave a low whistle.

"Well, that woman can have my first-born child for a public service like that. And I love my babies," she said emphatically. "I'll get her my spare shoes."

The two women left together, already deep in conversation.

Hotch returned to the conference room to find Reid on the phone again. He put it on speaker when Hotch walked in.

" _-AugustineAwakened is incredibly active on the message boards. He gives a lot of advice to newcomers to the site. And get this: he's had extensive contact with usernames that trace back to IP addresses belonging to to each of the victims' homes and/or places of work. Unfortunately, no luck tracking back Augustine's IP address. He's using exclusively public computers in places with no security footage."_

"Does that mean-"

" _That's right, you gorgeous piece of nerdy-if-technologically-challenged man-meat. I think we've found our unsub. He's targeting men who leave the Catholic Church and come out of Narnia. And this site is how he finds them."_

"Does he arrange meetups with them, Garcia?"

" _Not on the public forums. I was_ trying _to get the site's managers to hand over the private messaging data voluntarily. They're being prudes about it, so a'hacking I will go."_

"Thanks. Could you also track down all the other people who have been chatting with Augustine and run background on them?"

" _On it. Hey, is Helena there?"_

"She left to get cleaned up. Did you have more questions for her? I've given her my phone for the time being."

" _No, it's fine. She's just more fun to flirt with than both of you put together."_

"Sorry to disappoint. I'll have her call you when she's less covered in gore."

" _I look forward to it."_

The line clicked and Reid and Hotchner returned to work, but they found themselves going in circles.

"So…" Reid began, flopping into a chair and smoothing back his unruly brown mop of hair. "Do we have any idea what Blythe's mysterious mission is?"

"From what I gather," Hotch said, speaking deliberately, "They're targeting Volkoff's human trafficking ring. I've heard years of speculation that the Chicago mafia was stealing girls right out of their homes, brainwashing them, and selling them into slavery over multiple continents. If Andrea Swann's unit is running this mission, there's a good chance that they're aiming for that ring. From what she said on the phone, they're close to cracking it."

"Why did Blythe ask us to bring the jewelry box?" Hotch felt a deep, corrosive disgust in his gut as he answered.

"Several of the girls were affluent debutants snatched from high-society gatherings. It looks like Helena's admirers stole the abductees' accessories and used them to ply her favor. I recognize the red one from a photo of Brittany McHale on the night she was taken."

"How do you know all this?"

"I consulted on it a few years ago. There's a strong psychological component to how the girls are treated. In fact, I interviewed one of them."

"They recovered one?"

"In a manner of speaking. A CIA agent code-named Canary was sent in undercover. After a year in Moscow, she fell completely off the radar. She was gone for months. The CIA searched high and low for six months and found no trace."

"Volkoff snatched her?"

"At the time, the CIA assumed that she had just been killed. But one day she walked into headquarters at Langley. She said that she had been sent by her 'father.' That's when they called the BAU."

"I interviewed her. It was the most thorough mind wipe I've seen, before or since. She was a sharp, skilled agent when she went under. When she turned herself in, she had regressed to the mental capacity of a five-year-old and she was completely pliable. She would follow any order that was given to her."

"Brain damage?"

"Not due to any physical trauma. But her brain activity showed serious decay. We spent two months examining her, interrogating her, testing her."

"So what happened?"

"One day, we gave her a pen and paper and told her to write down everything she remembered about her life from her very first memory. I wasn't in the room, but I saw the footage later."

"Oh no-" Doctor Reid appeared to be genre-savvy enough to know roughly what happened next. Hotch nodded grimly.

"She smiled sweetly at Gideon, waved, and put her own eyes out with the pen."

"That's… how would someone drive a fit, healthy agent that crazy?"

"I have no idea. They couldn't save her eyes. She was committed to a sanatorium, but she died a few months later.

"At the time, the ring was run by another _pakhan,_ or patriarch: Gogol Kolesnikov. Arkady was just his second-in-command, a position known as the _sovietnik._ I didn't know of him when I was on the case. I was too focused on figuring out the girl. Gideon filled me in on the background this morning in the car."

"So what happened to Kolesnikov?"

"Apparently he very publicly killed himself in the middle of a crowded street in Moscow two years ago."

"Brain-washed."

"Exactly."

"So Volkoff is the real power."

"Most likely. I'm beginning to think that he may even perform the psychological torture himself. No one else would have that kind of access to the _pakhan."_

"Hotch… by now they're figured out that Blythe was an infiltrator. Do you think we should have sent her away with one person for protection?"

"I-" Hotch's stomach twisted into a knot. Reid was right; Blythe was in terrible danger until they apprehended Arkady and his entire Chicago network. "Call her. She has my cell."

Reid dialed and put his phone on speaker. Each ring seemed to last for hours. _One. Two. Three. Four._

" _Hello?"_ The voice of Officer Potts came through the other side of the line, chirpy and bright. Relief flooded the two men.

"Sergeant Potts, is Agent Blythe still with you?"

" _Yeah, of course. She's got a hell of a job washing the blood out of that mane of hers."_ Then, calling to Blythe: " _Hey Lena, looks like your G-Man is missing you already."_

"Just… be on the lookout. Keep your weapon on you and stick together."

" _Got it. And she says she misses you too. Bye."_

The line clicked and Hotch and Reid turned back to work, Reid struggling to hide the smirk tempting the corners of his mouth.

* * *

An hour later, a thoroughly-scrubbed Helena re-entered the station dressed loosely in a set of too-large lounge clothes. In Lucy Potts's sweatpants, tank top, and sneakers that flopped absurdly on her tiny feet, Helena relished the escape from Vivian Grant's restrictively glamorous wardrobe. Lucy had kept her thoroughly entertained on the walk back to the precinct with stories of her three young children, distracting her from the dark considerations that threatened to overcome her.

 _Plenty of time to mourn after this is over. Stay on target._

Lucy Potts's last and most-appreciated act of generosity had been to give Helena the two cigarettes remaining in her pack and a plastic lighter. She twirled one around her fingers as she surveyed the police station.

"Agent Blythe!" The skinny young man whom Hotch had introduced as Doctor Reid (though he couldn't be much older than twenty, or twenty-two at most) stumbled up to her with a preoccupied air. "We have more questions for you if you're up for it."

"Sure. Can you ask them outside? If I don't smoke soon I think I'll probably kill again."

"Um," he stammered, "yeah, that should be fine." He looked frightened. _Okay. Limit the sarcasm around Doctor Reid._

Hotch and Reid followed her outside and they talked while she lit up a cigarette and sucked at it with immense pleasure.

"So… If I understand correctly you're looking for a couple who frequents Catholic congregations in the D.C. area. The male is very large and very virile, so hyper-masculine that he may give the impression of compensating for insecurity. The woman is completely submissive to him, but intelligent, medically trained, capable of engineering a logistically complex operation… Fuck."

"You know a couple like that?"

"Yeah. I met a woman at UPenn… she was in the nursing program at the time. Very clever, very promising, but incredibly insecure. She had a series of terrible boyfriends. Finally she married one of them and dropped out in her last year. He was a brute. Extremely religious, too. He wouldn't tolerate an educated wife."

"Do you remember a name?"

"Mary and Ian Cavanagh."

"Did you get all that, Garcia?"

Helena lit the last cigarette, the restlessness unsettling her again.

" _You betcha, chief. I'll send Flynn and Morgan to their place_ tout de suite."

"Have all the potential victims been notified of the risk?"

" _Ooooh yes. It was a nightmare getting through the layers and layers of denial."_

"Thanks, Garcia. Keep us posted."

Hotch hung up and glanced at Helena, who was puffing away and glaring at the cracked sidewalk outside the precinct.

"Those will kill you, you know," he told her.

"Well they'd better get in line then, won't they? They've got a hell of a lot of competition."

"We'll get them, Helena. We just need to-"

"Has the analyzed data come back yet?" she interrupted. Her fragile good spirits were deteriorating quickly as the tension, fatigue, and grief began dominate her thoughts. She had never been any good at waiting games.

"Not yet."

"They don't know where the girls are being held captive?"

"No."

Helena was filled suddenly with despair. The single, overwhelmingly crucial detail was still missing. Her mission had been worse than useless; it had caused carnage and averted none.

"Then what," she snarled, "was the _point_ of all this?"

Stubbing out her cigarette aggressively, she re-entered the precinct to wait, leaving the two FBI agents to exchange hopeless looks.

"I'll go," said Hotch. Reid nodded gratefully. Angry spies, he decided, were well above his pay grade.

He found her sitting in front of their evidence boards, head lowered into her hands. He moved silently to pull up a chair next to her. In her borrowed, oversized clothes she looked especially small and curiously childlike.

" _Keep your wits about you,"_ Gideon had told him. Hotch could not imagine any threat that this depleted little person could possibly pose to him, wits or not.

"He worshipped you," he said in an undertone. She looked up at him, revealing bloodshot eyes.

"What?"

"Your husband. He worshipped you." She laughed sardonically.

"Well, Hotch, I'll let you in on a secret:" she said, leaning in very close and lowering her voice confidentially. "I have never in my life met a woman who would rather be worshipped than loved. Except for me, of course."

"When did you figure it out?"

"Consciously? I came back from my last mission to find out that Sam's father had just died. Jonathan Blythe was a regressive, closed-minded bigot. Sam could never even acknowledge his sexuality to himself until Jon was good and buried. When I saw him with Matt at the funeral, though… well, it was pretty obvious to everyone apart from them."

"He didn't know?"

"He was horrified when I suggested it. Denied it furiously. Told me that I was the only one for him."

"So what happened?"

"So I left. Took the undercover gig in Chicago and disappeared. He would never have given up the security of our marriage if I had stayed. And to be honest, I didn't think I could have let him go."

"You still loved him."

"Completely. I was planning to give up field work and spend more time at home. Maybe have a couple of kids. To be honest, I think I always knew and liked that he couldn't reciprocate in the same way. I liked to be his muse, but if he had really loved me I would have run."

Hotch watched her tired face, unsure of how to help her. Clearly a large portion of the damage to this girl had been done long before Igor Tikhonov got his hands on her.

"You should sleep, Helena," he said. At this point, he had no other helpful suggestions. "How long has it been since you got a solid night's rest?"

"Every time I close my eyes, I see Igor and Arkady chopping Katya into pieces. I can't sleep until I see this through, one way or another."

"Try, won't you? I swear I'll wake you when I hear back from Andi."

"You're a huge nag," she complained, but she smiled warmly at him. "But if it un-knits that stormy brow of yours just a little bit, then I'll try."

She leaned forward to fold her arms on the table and lay her head down on them.

"Thank you," he murmured, running a hand over her back. He returned to Reid, feeling uncomfortably emotionally charged.

"Is she okay?"

"Not really, but I think I've talked her down for now."

"She must be severely traumatized underneath it all."

"I imagine so."

"Should she really be working?"

"I don't think she's fit to do anything else right now."

Reid frowned and nodded. At that moment, Hotch's phone rang.

"Hotchner."

" _It's Swann. We're nearly done with the analysis. We should have an address on the girls in thirty minutes."_

"That's great news. I'll let her know."

" _How's she doing?"_

"As well as can be expected, considering everything."

" _Is it true that her husband was murdered while she was under?"_

"Yeah. She's handling it."

" _That poor girl. I'm glad it's you with her. I don't think I'd know what to say."_

"She'll want to participate in the bust. Is that okay with you?"

" _I'll leave that up to your judgment."_

"Alright. we'll call in a SWAT team and be waiting for your call."

He hung up and turned to Reid.

"Get a SWAT team ready and find us vests. I promised to tell Blythe when we had something."

"On it."

* * *

When Hotch re-entered the evidence room, he indulged in an uncharacteristic fit of profanity. The room was empty but for the evidence boards and a truly vexing note on the table, laid neatly next to what appeared to be his own wallet.

" _Gone to get cigarettes. Back soon. IOU $5."_

He recognized the leftward slant of Helena's beautiful cursive script. A thought surfaced through his rising panic and anger: _No matter what, no one can_ ever _know that she managed to pick your pocket._

* * *

Helena strode down the sidewalk, savoring her small vacation. Her ill-fitting clothes and the angry bruise over half of her face drew stares from passersby, but none of them hindered her as she searched for a kiosk or liquor store.

 _Stealing from a federal agent, Blythe. Pretty sure that makes you a full-fledged junkie._

She smiled, imagining Hotch's brows drawn together in stern disapproval.

 _I'll buy him a drink when this is over._

" _Helena Blythe, I take it?"_

Amidst the many mingling conversations in the city, one genteel voice cut through the collective, addressing her in purring Russian. She spun around to see the man to whose downfall she had devoted her every waking moment for the past year.

"Arkady," she breathed.

" _You've been very rude to my son, Helena,"_ said the _pakhan_ reproachfully. " _Taking advantage of him. Of his stupidity."_

He was not a tall man, nor an especially distinctive one. He stood a few inches taller than Helena, with narrow shoulders and small, active hands. His round, greasy face was dominated by large, thick lips and clear gray eyes. He had a habit of redundantly smoothing his impeccably tailored suit when he spoke, tugging and adjusting his sleeves and trousers constantly.

Not by any means an imposing figure. Helena, however, found herself frozen in fear. In those delicate hands, he held the gun she had brought to the Casanova. No one around them seemed to have noticed.

" _I realize, of course, that your own life means very little to you. However, I count three children under the age of ten currently within shooting range. I do not take pleasure in killing children, but they would not be my first."_

" _What do you want?"_ she snarled.

" _Drop your phone. That's right, the one in your pocket."_ He watched as she slowly, grudgingly obeyed him. " _My associate has a car parked two blocks down. We will both move in that direction. You will sit in the passenger seat and keep very, very quiet."_

As they walked, he continued to speak.

" _I am informed that you have taken an interest in my menagerie."_ She whirled on her heel and he paused three feet away, the gun pointed towards a little girl with brown, curly hair.

" _Don't call them that."_

" _Oh very well, I'll indulge your high-minded quibbling. The poor_ girls. _Is that better?"_ She turned and kept walking. " _You wanted to rescue them, didn't you? That's why you risked everything? That's why you turned my own wife against me?"_ She heard the anger through his pleasant facade when he mentioned Katya, his best work. The girl he had kidnapped from her fiance and family thirty years ago and broken to pieces, rebuilding her into the perfect domestic wife.

" _I turned Katya against you because you had fucked with her mind the same way you destroyed Canary's. They both deserved better."_

" _But as it turns out, my influence was the stronger one. She came to me in the end. She confessed."_

" _But she didn't give me up."_ She turned her head to see the spasm of annoyance that flitted across the small man's face. " _You're not as powerful as you think you are, Arkady."_

" _Well, now you will have a chance to see my methods in person. I am so looking forward to working on another agent, Helena. Your kind is such fun."_

They had reached the car, and Helena climbed in with her blood boiling.

Suddenly, she remembered Hotch admonishing her as she lit her cigarette: _"Those will kill you, you know."_

 _I really fucking hate people who are always right._

The gargantuan man at the wheel did not acknowledge her in any way. Arkady climbed into the back and set the cold barrel of the gun against the back of her neck.

" _We'll see,"_ she murmured.

Every thought save one had drained from her mind.

 _No matter what, Arkady, I will watch you die._


	6. Nadya

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies. But in battalions!" -William Shakespeare

They rushed through the streets, calling her name.

Hotch skidded to a halt, noting the presence of the liquor store nearest to the police station. If she had come in this direction, either she was inside, or she had not made it this far. He wrenched open the door and careened inside.

"FBI," he said, shoving his credentials at the shopkeeper. "Did you sell a pack of cigarettes to a woman, 5'6", 120 pounds, with red hair and a large bruise on her left cheek?"

The elderly man shook his head, mystified.

"Saw a girl like that outside, though. She looked like she meant to come in, but then she met a man and left with him."

"Agent Hotchner." He whirled at the sound Sergeant Potts's urgent voice. The tall, strapping young woman had followed him into the shop, holding out a small black object. It took him a moment to identify it as his own cellphone. Potts's green eyes were wide and frightened.

Hotch turned on the old man again, wrestling down his own alarm.

"Describe him," he commanded him, leveling the shopkeeper's nerves with a glare.

"Wh-who?" stammered the man, cowering under the flashing of Hotchner's dark eyes.

"The man she left with," he snarled. "Describe him and tell me the direction they were headed."

"He… he was small, dressed like a thousand bucks. Real nice Italian number. And… I don't know, I caught a look at his eyes and they were scary."

"Hotchner, that's Arkady. He tracked her down in person."

" _Where,"_ pressed Hotch, his voice growing quiet and deadly calm, "did they go?"

"They headed off that way," said the petrified shopkeeper, gesturing with his thumb. "He looked real calm. Real happy. I think he-"

But his interrogators had gone, leaving the elderly shopkeeper to lean on the glass counter and wipe his brow feverishly.

 _God help this Arkady guy,_ he thought, remembering the murder in Agent Hotchner's eyes. _I wouldn't cross that scary bastard for anything, not even a woman._

Hotch dialed as he strode back to the precinct.

"Swann, tell me you have the location."

" _I've got fifteen places in Chicago paid for by money traced back to Arkady's businesses. Our analysts can't figure out which one houses the girls. Why the rush?"_

"He found her. He took Blythe and I'm betting her life that he took her there."

" _What the fuck, Hotch? How did he take her from under your nose?"_

He couldn't defend himself against that. Even his fury at Blythe couldn't compete with his disgust with his own negligence.

"Believe me, I know. I'll apologize as many times as you want later. Send me the addresses and I'll find her."

" _My people are sending them to your technical analyst now. Bring her home, Hotch."_

"I will."

He made to hang up, but she stopped him. Her voice was suddenly very small.

" _Hotch-"_ she started. " _Is he going to try to break her like Canary?"_

"I think so."

" _We can't lose another one like that."_

"We won't. Blythe is as resilient as it gets."

" _So was Canary."_

"Andi, you need to focus on the job. We can't do her any good if we're compromised."

" _Yeah,"_ breathed the woman. _"Easier said than done. Call me when you know something."_

 _Click._

What Hotch hadn't told Agent Swann, and what he tried very hard not to think about himself, was that Blythe's current mental state must leave her uncommonly vulnerable to Arkady Volkoff's psychological torture. Sleep-deprived, violated, and grieving. They couldn't expect her to hold out for very long. And by the time Garcia figured out which location to storm, she would have been in that repugnant man's company for an hour at least. Hotch was relatively confident that a sadist like Volkoff would not kill her immediately, but the damage he might do to the spy's psyche in even an hour…

 _No time to wring your hands, Hotchner. Get to it._

He dialed again.

"Garcia, you've got the addresses?"

" _Yeah, give me the parameters."_

"It would be somewhere remote and large enough to hold at least thirty people captive."

" _Down to five."_

"Brainwashing that extreme must require Volkoff to have complete control of the victims' sensory input. Check for any renovation that suggests sound-proofing. There would be a separate chamber where he works on them individually."

" _Got it. Warehouse on the riverbank. Bought by one of Volkoff's subsidiaries and modified two years ago to include a 'recording studio.'"_

"You continue to amaze me. Send me the address."

" _Done. Good luck-"_

Hotch had already hung up and joined Reid and the SWAT team, donning his kevlar vest.

"We've got them. Move out," he barked.

Every second that passed stretched out interminably.

 _Not another one. Not this time._

* * *

The large black car slid to a smooth stop in front of a large warehouse on the bank of the Chicago River. Helena glanced around, noting the absence of civilians in the vicinity. With no one else to threaten, Arkady had to rely now on her instinct to preserve her own life with the gun pressed into the small of her back. Or perhaps merely her urgent need to see the inside of the "menagerie."

As they approached the door, she braced herself for the sight of thirty young, female corpses. Until that moment, she had not allowed herself to acknowledge the possibility that Arkady, frighted by Igor's sudden demise, would dispose of the merchandise immediately.

Arkady's goon opened the doors, which, she noticed, were thoroughly soundproofed. A second, thick-walled structure greeted her as they stepped into the dark interior. In a sudden fit of fancy, her mind conjured a ludicrous image of herself descending through the hollow shells of a _matryoshka_ doll, searching for the small body swaddled in the center.

" _Welcome to the menagerie, Canary,"_ murmured her slight captor.

 _Melodramatic little pipsqueak, aren't you?_ she thought irritably. She stayed silent, however, refusing to turn and look at him. Shrugging, he threw open the second set of doors.

Her eyes met with only a thick darkness. Her nose, however, was instantly assaulted by the overwhelming stench of human filth. As the door swung open with a subtle creak, the sound elicited a series of groans, shrieks, and sobbing from the inside of the menagerie, as though Helena had waded into the depths of Tartarus itself.

Taking a deep breath, she stepped into the tormented room. Lights flickered on, casting an anemic yellow light over what looked like an enormous crate draped completely in thick black cloth. In the far corner of the room, a small chamber of thick glass stood empty save for one simple wooden rocking chair and a bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling. Nearby, rolls of fabric in different colors were stacked against the wall.

 _A minimalist. That's nice._

"Persuasion," volunteered Arkady in perfect English, "does not require nearly as much vulgar paraphernalia as you Americans seem to think it does."

She turned around to face him, her eyes meeting his for the first time since she left the car.

"Torture isn't a very impressive hobby, Arkady Ivanovich."

"Perhaps not at the cruder levels. I do think, however, that my work on your predecessor… what did you call her…?"

"Her name," she spat, "was Clara. She had three siblings and she would have been an aunt by now."

As they faced each other, groans and incoherent pleas continued to emanate from the black box.

 _At least they're alive on some level._

"Oh yes. Clara. Clara the Canary. I re-named her, of course. I called her Anya," he recalled with a fond expression in his predator's eyes. "She took a full two months to accept her name. And to call me 'father.' I have them all call me that." He turned to ponder the box. "It's too bad to lose these. It would have been a profitable batch. I think the loss will be worth it to force you to watch them die."

 _He can't escape with all of them, but he has time to execute them._

"Release these women, Arkady," she pleaded. "You can't get them all out before the FBI track you down. They'll be on their way now."

"What, in your estimation," he inquired with interest, "are the chances of me doing that? I haven't had a chance to complete these ones yet. They still don't answer to their proper names."

"You've got me. You know I'll be more fun to break than all of them put together."

"Ah, but I'll still have you after I kill them."

"No," she said, with grim satisfaction. "You won't. We've got all your financial records." This revelation appeared to have turned the little man to stone. She kept going, her pleasure growing with every word. "By now the FBI has already figured out where you're keeping the girls. They're on their way, Arkady. You're finished."

He stared at her for a long minute, searching her face for signs of deception.

"You are an excellent liar, Agent Blythe."

"That's very true," she said, inclining her head with a gracious smile as though he had paid her a lavish compliment. "But this time I'm not bluffing."

"Katya could not have given you my records. She knew nothing."

"I told you, I didn't turn Katya because of the mission. That was for my own pleasure. Someone else gave me the files of the Empire."

" _Who?"_ he hissed in Russian, " _Who would dare betray me?"_

He was incensed. The revolver trembled in his white-knuckled grip.

" _It's hard to know who your enemies are when you've hurt everyone at one time or another, isn't it?"_ she mused. " _Go on, Arkady. Run through the list. Think about every vicious atrocity you've ever committed and wonder: who had enough? Who in your circle of fiends finally decided to bring you down?"_

" _Shut up. You're lying,"_ shrieked he. He was a control freak. The idea of a single cog in his abominable machine coming loose completely unhinged him.

" _I wonder if you even remember this particular drop in your sea of blood, Arkady,"_ she continued, flooded with adrenaline and high on her opponent's rage and fear. " _She was sixteen when you took an interest in her. The daughter of one of your lieutenants. Can you picture her face?"_ she asked him, watching his fat lips form silent, unintelligible words. " _No?"_

She paused, enjoying the beads of sweat trickling down his expansive forehead.

" _Her name was Nadezhda, but everyone called her Nadya,"_ she said. It mattered enormously to her that he hear the name of the girl who had undone his regime.

" _Nadya's father was a real talent with money. That's why you drafted him: to make all your little antics vanish into rows and rows of magic numbers._

" _But he was an intellectual, not a mobster. He started to question you. His conscience became your liability."_

" _You're a filthy little liar-"_

" _So you sent him a message, didn't you? You tied him down, him and his wife, and made them watch their eldest child as you took her to pieces. Did you rape Nadya yourself, little man? I doubt it. I think it was probably Igor, wasn't it? That seems like his style."_

" _Vasil would never turn on me. He has no spine."_

The sound-proofed room covered the approach of the battalion of agents outside Volkoff's crumbling empire. Inside, the spy kept talking, caught up entirely in the glory of watching Arkady's iron grip falter and fade.

" _Not normally. But do you know how old Nadya would be today?"_ She paused again, waiting for his answer, which did not come. " _She would be nearly twenty-four. She'd be my age. Vasil took eight years to find his courage, but he managed it for me. For her. Because he couldn't let another girl down. He couldn't disappoint me because he's been looking for a way to atone, to avenge, for eight long years. Do you feel her hand in this, Arkady Ivanovich? Do you hear Nadya laughing now?"_ she pressed. She had always had a flare for the dramatic, but now it served her well.

"Like I said," she continued in English, "you're not nearly as powerful as you think you are. You're just a silly little goblin with a silly little gun-"

 _Bang._

Helena stopped speaking just as the second doors exploded and Agent Hotchner, flanked by twenty black-clad men, burst into the room.

But she did not smile at him. She did not even turn.

The smoking revolver dropped from Arkady's hand as three agents converged on him, pinning his thin body to the ground.

Hotch pushed forward to reach her as she stumbled backward, staring at Hotch with wide, blank eyes. She gasped wordlessly and pulled her hand away from her stomach. The pair gazed down at the red liquid dripping over her delicate white fingers, suspended for a split second in mutual incomprehension. Then she crumpled to the ground with a sigh, her mission completed.


	7. Avanti

"If his body and his essence remain apart,

Burn his body, but spare this, his heart."-Kurt Vonnegut

 **May 2, 2004**

 **Washington D.C.**

"Babe, could you do the laundry today? I've got an open house this afternoon."

Hotch glanced up from his report to see his wife in her most flattering suit. She looked ravishing as ever, her golden hair twisted up to expose her neck.

"Of course," he said, mustering a weary smile. "Leave it to me. Oh-and there's chocolate chip dough in the fridge if you want to pull that realtor trick with the smell of baking cookies."

She beamed at him and rounded the table to kiss her husband's stubbly cheek.

"You're the best, babe."

She glanced over his shoulder at the report that had him so distracted.

"Who's Helena Blythe?" she inquired lightly, noting the name that appeared so often on the page in front of him. She noted the tension in his jaw at the mention of the woman's name.

"She's an agent who was shot on my last case."

"Oh god, honey, I'm sorry. Did you know her well?"

"Apparently not well enough to keep her safe," he muttered darkly. "I took my eye off her and she was gone."

"Aaron, sweetie, I hate seeing what this job does to you," she said, stroking his hair. "You can't save everyone. This girl knew the risks when she joined up."

"Haley, I'm fine. I don't think she's dead." _Or if she is, no one told me._

"Oh! Well what are you brooding about, then?"

"I promise I'm not brooding," he assured her, forcing himself to turn and smile. "This is just my face, remember?" He produced an exaggerated scowl for her benefit, and she rewarded him with a giggle and a kiss.

"Alright, then, grump. I'm out. Thanks for the cookie dough. I'll try not to eat it all before I arrive at the house."

He heard the door shut behind her and allowed his face to lapse back into its pensive frown. There was something to be said for faking a good mood for Haley's sake, but ultimately he had begun to find it exhausting.

He could not tell his wife about the steel cage they had found in Volkoff's warehouse, filled with twenty-eight naked, emaciated, screaming women. Some starving, some already dead.

He could not tell her how he had pressed his fingers to Helena's torso, trying in vain to stem the flow of her blood from the small stomach wound as he bellowed for a medic.

He could not tell her of the ride in the ambulance, during which his only shred of hope was the vice in which Helena's hand held his. Of the silent plane ride back to D.C. while Helena was still in surgery.

He had gotten no news from Chicago since that day. Now nearly a week had elapsed, and Lucinda Potts's promised call still had not come.

 _What would you even do with the information if you got it? She's not your problem anymore._

 _Right_. He took deep breaths and repeated it like a mantra: _not your problem._

The tension in his shoulders began to relax.

His phone rang and he leapt for it. _Right. You're the height of detached cool._

"Hotchner."

" _Hey, it's Lucy Potts. You know, from Chic-"_

"Yes, I remember you, Sergeant Potts. How can I help you?" he asked, restraining himself from interrogating the kind woman.

" _I thought you might want to know that Lena's awake."_

"Oh, yes, thanks for calling," he said, keeping his voice neutral. Despite his composure, he thought he could hear a smile in the officer's next words.

" _Would you like to hear the prognosis?"_ she offered, a sly, knowing note in her voice.

 _She's onto you._

"If it's not too much trouble."

" _The doctors think she'll make a full recovery if she ever stops trying to bribe the orderlies for a smoke. The biggest risk to her health right now is death by nurse."_

Hotch laughed sincerely for the first time that week.

"They should really just give in. That woman is a fiend when it comes to nicotine."

" _That's what I told them, but they didn't have much of a sense of humor about it. Listen, Helena said to thank you for her. She said that she'd apologize for being a 'reckless junkie bitch' in person. Did she really pick your pocket?"_

"If the nurses don't kill her, I probably will."

 _As usual, though, looks like I'll have a lot of competition._

" _Fair enough. It was a pleasure working with you, Agent Hotchner."_

"Likewise, Sergeant Potts."

The next phone call that Hotch got came only five minutes after he hung up. It had an air of Providence that he had come to recognize as a sign of Gideon meddling.

He had just closed out the Cavanagh case file and started on the Volkoff report when his phone rang.

"Hotchner."

" _It's Gideon. There's a perp in Chicago that I'd like to have interviewed. Could you go with Morgan?"_

"Jason, I just got back from Chicago."

" _Yeah, but you went with Reid. Now you're going with_ Morgan."

"Is that supposed to be an incentive?"

" _No, I think you already have an incentive."_ Hotch sighed and ran a hand through his hair. The problem was that he really did want to go, if only to berate Helena Blythe in person.

"Fine. Have the briefing sent ahead to the jet."

" _Great. Wheels up in an hour."_

* * *

The moment they finished reviewing the details of their case, Morgan pounced.

"So what's she like?"

"What's who like?" asked Hotch, feigning ignorance.

"Oh come on, Hotch. Helena. The tasty widow-spy."

Hotch shot him an amused look before considering his answer. What _was_ she like? He had only seen her in such outlandishly ridiculous circumstances that it was hard to imagine her personality outside of it.

"She's one of the most resourceful people I've ever met," he volunteered finally. "She was alone with Igor Tikhonov for hours and sustained only minor injuries before stabbing him with the heel of her shoe."

"You're kidding," gasped Morgan. When Hotch shook his head, his colleague laughed aloud and shook his head. "Now that is one badass motherfucker."

"Then she managed to stall Arkady Volkoff for nearly an hour before we got there. If she hadn't kept him busy, he would have killed every single one of the girls and escaped with Blythe."

"Well damn. I see why Gideon wants her. That's a lot of grit and native profiling talent."

"What are you talking about, Morgan?"

"Gideon's thinking recruiting her to the BAU. We have a gap to fill, and he says that we need someone young and hot-blooded on the team. Not to mention that we don't have a single woman on the team."

"She wandered off while a known sadist was hunting for her. She risked her life for a pack of cigarettes."

"Oh come on, Hotch. Do you really think that's why she did it?"

"You think she wanted Arkady to find her?"

"Maybe not consciously."

"Doesn't that make it worse?"

"Gideon thinks that under a good leader, that recklessness could come in handy. Not to mention that she solved a case for us while she was sleep-deprived, recently tortured, and newly in mourning. She was spot on about Mary and Ian Cavanagh, and because of her we caught them before they managed to kill again."

"I see the argument, but do we really need another hotshot on the team? Our section chief already hates our guts."

"I think you want her on the team just as much as Gideon does. You're just a contrarian pain in the ass."

"I'll concede the latter point. I'll withhold judgment on Helena Blythe."

* * *

When he walked into the hospital the next day, he felt suddenly enormously foolish. He had even, inexplicably, stopped at a florist on the way. The maternal nurse who showed him to Helena's door smiled warmly at his demeanor.

"Careful, sweetie. That girl will eat you alive if you show weakness."

"Has she been as unmanageable as I hear?"

"Worse. I've had to threaten to strap her down four times today."

"I'm so sorry."

She shrugged.

"Agents are always the worst patients. At least this one has a pleasant family. Here we are." She stopped in front of a private room and rapped briskly. From the the other side of the door, Hotch could hear uproarious laughter.

" _Avanti!"_ exclaimed a male voice. Hotch entered the room, his self-consciousness growing by the second.

The room had three occupants, all bright-faced and merry. Helena lay on a hospital bed, smiling at him. The bruise on her cheek had begun to subside and she looked anomalously cheerful for one who had taken a gunshot to the gut.

The second woman was older, perhaps in her sixties, with a magisterial beauty about her. She was very tall and slim, dressed all in emerald green, with sleek silver hair pulled back from her fine-featured face. She let her large dark eyes wander over Hotch with unabashed interest.

The man was similarly long and lean with a magnificent white mustache and a wonderfully tailored suit.

"Agent Hotchner!" Blythe cried out. "What a wonderful surprise."

"I was in the area," he explained abruptly.

"Well, I'm glad of it. Manon here wanted to meet my savior." She gestured to the woman, who inclined her head but continued her scrutiny.  
"We owe you an enormous debt, Agent Hotchner," she remarked in a strong Russian accent.

"Oh please, it's Hotch," he said automatically. "And it really wasn't me. It took a lot of people to wrap up that case."

"Humble _and_ heroic," said the other man, his eyes twinkling under wild white brows. "Quite the paragon, this one."

"Oh, I'm sorry, I should introduce you properly. Hotch, this is Manon, my godmother, and Simon, her… well, they're far too sophisticated to label things."

Manon chuckled and Simon moved forward to shake Hotch's hand firmly.

"Lena, love, we ought to go," he said. "And I can't keep your mother at bay indefinitely. Do try to get out of the hospital before she finds out what happened."

"I'm working on an escape plan. These nurses are cunning bastards."

The elegant pair took turns kissing her cheeks and slipped out of the door, Manon throwing one last speculative look at Hotch.

He sat down by her bedside, laying the flowers on his lap. Her face had sobered when they left. She had been maintaining a bright facade, but now she merely looked exhausted.

"They seem nice," he remarked, refraining from bombarding her with questions. Helena smiled fondly.

"Manon is spectacular, isn't she?"

"She's the reason you speak Russian?"

"She's the reason for a lot of things about me." He sensed that she had no intention of speaking about her past, and he changed the subject accordingly.

"I hear that you're an atrocious patient."

"It turns out that nurses have no sense of humor."

"They do take a dim view of patients trying to bolt ten minutes after waking up from major surgery. How do you feel?" he asked, watching her face in concern. She chuckled darkly.

"Shot to hell and strung out on nicotine. I haven't found the right person to bribe for a damn cigarette yet-" she stopped midsentence and grinned as he pulled a pack and a lighter out of the inner pocket of his coat. "You beautiful, beautiful man."

"I figured that you deserve full-tar after what you've been through. But I'm honor-bound to remind you that you shouldn't be smoking so soon after surgery. Or at all, really-"

"Shut up and light up, Hotch. You smoke, right?"

"Not lately."

"Too bad. I have to implicate you in case we're caught. That's how it works in the mob, you know." Hotch grinned despite himself. He put two cigarettes loosely between his lips and lit them, then handed one to her. Blythe sucked on hers with obvious relish, blowing rings of smoke. When she had taken several greedy pulls with her eyes closed she stretched out languorously on the hospital bed and turned her gaze to him.

"So how about you? How's Hotch?" She pronounced his nickname with a sardonic emphasis.

"Furious, but impressed. You took a bullet to the gut and the doctors tell me you'll make a full recovery. And it looks like Arkady's going down for good." At this, she snorted.

"No, he's not." She took another deep pull and stared malevolently into the corner of the room, as though glaring at a nonexistent person. "My contact at the DA's office tells me that they're cutting a deal with him. Sending him back to Russia in exchange for a few local names." She looked back at him and smiled bitterly. "If I'd known they were going to set him loose, I'd have thought twice about letting Igor pull out one of my molars." Hotch truly wished that he was surprised, but, as he had discovered many times as both a prosecutor and a profiler, anything goes in politics. He searched around for something encouraging to say, but came up blank. A morbid silence stretched between them as he smoked to buy himself time. Finally, he settled for a simple:

"I'm sorry." She shrugged and smiled again, sadly this time. It was incredible how many different types of smiles she had, and how difficult they would make it to read her for one less versed in the nuances of human expression.

"There's nothing to be done about it now. I should have known that it would go down that way." For some reason, this new cynicism in her was unbearable to Hotchner.

"At least we got the girls out. A lot of women got their lives back because of what you did."

" _Some_ of the girls. They found about thirty bodies when they sent a diving team into the river." She threw the butt of her cigarette moodily into the glass of water at the bedside and grinned suddenly. "The nurses are going to _flip_ when they see this."

Hotch wondered whether he should allow their small conspiracy to pull them back into levity, but something prevented him. She was vulnerable just then. It was possible that she hadn't allowed herself a moment's dark reflection on her ordeal since she had woken up, and if he let her shut it down and assume a mask of cheerfulness, she might just let it fester.

"You know, an old colleague of mine-he wrote the book on hostage negotiation-used to talk about 'minimal loss.'" He ventured, watching her closely from his chair. "It means that every life saved counts, but we can never expect to save them all, because we won't."

"Sounds like a happy guy."

"Yeah, he took early retirement," he admitted, smiling slightly. She laughed wholeheartedly for a moment before the motion turned into a wince of pain. Reflexively he stood and moved closer, dropping the flowers. "I'm fine," she assured him. To distract them from her moment of weakness, she gestured at the fallen bouquet. "Is that for me, or do you visit all the girls?"

"Oh, yeah. Here." He stooped to pick up the arrangement of sunflowers and forget-me-nots and foisted it at her, suddenly unable to make eye contact. _It's a friendly gesture. Don't get weird, Hotchner._

He forced himself to look into her eyes, only to see that they were swimming suddenly with unshed tears.

"Sunflowers and forget-me-nots," she whispered, her blue eyes wide, her lips quivering slightly. _You wouldn't know they were quivering if you weren't fucking_ staring _at them, you lecherous son of a bitch,_ he reminded himself.

"You got the choice of flowers from Sam's paintings?" she asked, her voice very soft now. She was looking at him with so much affection that he found it nearly impossible to hold her gaze and his composure at the same time.

"Yeah," he murmured, his tone matching hers.

"You're a very kind man, Aaron. I don't know how you keep that up in your line of work."

"I think my team would contend that I don't," he responded wryly, trying too late to defuse the intimacy between them.

"I very much doubt that. From what I've seen, the boy worships you." Her eyes were fixed on his, and Hotch noted vaguely that the distance between them appeared to be shrinking gradually. He wasn't sure which one of them was closing it. The moment stretched and intensified.

His trance was rudely broken by a painful searing at his fingertips as his abandoned cigarette burned down to a tiny stump. He swore and dropped it next to hers in the glass. Helena jumped and sat back. She averted her eyes from his and ran her fingers through her hair. There was a pregnant pause, then:

"Can you keep a secret?" she asked him with a sudden, blinding smile. He stared at her uncomprehendingly, wondering where her mind could possibly have leapt to. She took his hesitation in stride and went on. "Oh don't worry, I don't expect you to. If it were possible to keep a secret, I'd be out of a job."

"Alright, tell me your secret," he said cautiously.

"I hate my job," she said. "I mean… not in the way most people do, where they find a lot of it tedious or unpleasant and sometimes get drunk and complain about their asshole boss. I mean that I hate it fundamentally, but I enjoy it viscerally." She watched him as she spoke, searching for something in his face. He sat back down in his chair, strangely enthralled by this rare bout of uninhibited, forthcoming honesty.

"How do you mean?"

"Well…" For once, she seemed to be searching for words. "I think I'm addicted to undercover work in the same way that I'm addicted to nicotine. There's just something about not being me that I crave." She leaned back and closed her eyes, her brows drawn together in a rare frown. Absentmindedly, she toyed with the sunflowers in her lap. "But I can feel it siphoning off parts of me. It sucks the life out of me but I don't quit because it feels so damn good. I don't think I could be happy if I stopped."

She fell silent and lay there as though asleep for a full minute. Hotch had the distinct feeling that she had forgotten that he was there. He considered his answer carefully.

"Well, I'll make you a deal," he said at length. "Quit both for a year. If at the end, you find out that you really can't be happy without, you can take up one or the other again."

"I'll consider it, though I've no idea what else I would do with myself." She pondered for a moment, before looking ruefully at Hotch. "I should probably let you yell at me now, right?"

"That can wait until you can fight back without ripping your stitches open. You know how stupid you were."

"Yeah."

"It wasn't just because you were craving a smoke, was it?"

She scowled and toyed with the bouquet.

"God, I don't know. Probably not. I wasn't thinking clearly, obviously."

"Obviously."

"But I couldn't just _sit_ there while Arkady disposed of the girls. I had to do something and yeah, if that brought me within scratching distance of the sick bastard… all the better."

"At some point, you're going to have to stop treating your life like a five dollar poker chip."

She shrugged.

"That depends. If I could trade my life to make sure that Arkady Volkoff never gets his hands on another woman… Isn't that clearly worth it?"

"Would Manon and Simon think so?"

"Manon would kill me for even entertaining the idea."

"There you go, then. You don't live in a vacuum, Blythe. Dying isn't just a personal choice."

She grinned.

"Alright. I concede. Next time I take a calculated risk, I'll have you check my math first."

"Good." He finally returned her smile. She was rash and cavalier, but she took criticism gracefully. "When do you get out of here?"

"I'm campaigning for tomorrow and I've tormented my captors enough that they might just let it happen."

"Are you cleared to fly?"

"I will be if I have anything to say about it."

"I'll assume that you will be, then. If you're ready in two days, you can hitchhike back with us. Morgan's curious to meet the woman who successfully weaponized her shoe."

Beaming, she nodded and thanked him, clasping his hand in both of hers. He left soon afterwards, feeling overwrought. Without realizing it, he had become deeply invested in Helena Blythe's wellbeing. Her paper-thin cheer and the profound damage underneath produced a compulsion in him to try to pick up some of the fragments.

There existed in his mind no further doubt that she would make a fantastic profiler, if that was what she chose to do. His misgivings came from his own failings; more and more, he doubted whether he could smother his fascination and work with her as a neutral colleague.

 _You can and you will,_ he chided himself.

He pulled out his phone and called Haley.

 _Everything will be fine._

* * *

The consultation concluded quickly, leaving Morgan with a few hours to visit his family while Hotch completed the paperwork and briefed Gideon.

" _Oh, did you get a chance to visit Blythe?"_ asked his unit chief casually.

"I did."

" _That's nice. Any idea of her career plans?"_

"Subtle. You know, you could have _told_ me that you wanted to recruit her."

" _I could have, but you're a contrarian pain in the ass."_

"Is that my informal title around the office or something?"

" _It's getting to be."_

"Good to know. And I do know that she's considering leaving the CIA."

" _That's good news."_

"And I've offered her a ride back to D.C. on the jet."

" _You see? You're a natural recruiter."_

"Please don't fixate on Helena Blythe, Gideon. We can run an open search and invite her to apply, but there are plenty of candidates out there."

" _I'll keep an open mind if you do."_

* * *

The next morning, Hotch's phone rang. He glanced down to see a number that he didn't recognize.

"Hotchner."

" _You're even more laconic on the phone."_

"It's standard policy, Blythe."

" _Yeah, but all those bureau standards suit you so well."_

"Did you call just to see how I answer my phone?"

" _No, I called to see if you're sick of me yet. Specifically, whether I can still take advantage of that extravagant jet."_

"Can you get to the airport?"

" _Yes. Especially if you're still at the precinct."_

Hotch felt a tap on his right shoulder and turned around to see Helena smiling behind him, wearing a gauzy, bright yellow dress and carrying a small black backpack slung over one shoulder. Along with one of Hotch's sunflowers tucked behind her right ear and the rest of the bouquet braided into her long copper hair, she wore her bruise like an avant-garde accessory. All traces of her doubt and depression had been wiped away from her youthful face. The sight of her, breezy, cheerful, and pretty, correlated-he refused to say " _caused"-_ with a slight acceleration of his heartbeat.

"Ready when you are, chief," she said.

"I never said that the invitation was still open," he said severely, suppressing a smile.

"Now Hotch, is that any way to treat a woman who looks like that?" Morgan's voice came from behind Hotch. Helena looked Morgan up and down admiringly.

"Damn," she breathed appreciatively, transferring her smile to him and moving forward. "Helena Blythe," she said, shaking his hand.

"Derek Morgan. I'm the fun one," he replied, kissing the hand she had given him.

"So I see." She recovered her hand and shoved it in her pocket, turning back to Hotch. "What do you say, Straight Man? May I tag along?"

"I say that if you call me that again, I'll shove you in the overhead compartment and leave you there."

"Fair enough," she conceded lightheartedly, "I'll say goodbye to Lucy and meet you at the car."

As she bounded away to find the generous Sergeant Potts, Morgan chuckled and looked at Hotch.

"I wouldn't mind having _that_ around the office everyday."

"Morgan," Hotch muttered in a warning tone, "behave yourself."

"Oh come on, it would fly in the face of everything I stand for to behave myself with a girl like that."

"I am _not_ spending two hours listening to your poorly-conceived innuendoes."

"Sorry, Straight Man. Looks like that's exactly what you'll be doing."

Hotch put all his suffering into one deep, prolonged sigh and followed his colleague out to the imposing black FBI SUV, preparing for an excruciating flight with the two most flirtatious people he had ever met.

Still, that sunflower looked completely charming next to her freckled cheek.


	8. Everything Must Go

" _In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on." -Robert Frost_

 **July 10, 2004**

 **Washinton D.C.**

Helena shifted uncomfortably in the upholstered seat, her eyes roaming over the purple carpeting and shabby-chic decor. She felt as immensely out of place among the bustling stylists and glamorous patrons of the salon as she always had at her mother's high-society gatherings in Manhattan. Worse, she felt exposed. Her cursory search for a seat with its back to a corner had been fruitless, and the waiting area was not in sight of the door.

 _Hypervigilance is a bitch._

On top of her nerves, there was a profound and crushing boredom. After a full two months of excruciating medical leave, she had finally been cleared to return to the CIA as a data analyst. Even now, however, she detected a distinct decrease in the urgency of the cases to which she was assigned. These days, her work comprised strictly background research. When she had confronted her supervisor, she had merely given her a sympathetic smile and a figurative pat on the head.

" _Give yourself some time to heal, Helena. You'll be back in the saddle in no time."_

Helena had tried to point out that the courteous thing to do for a traumatized agent would be to flood her with as much urgent work as possible. _A little help in avoiding my issues. That's all I ask._

In the absence of engaging work, she had thrown herself into the task of putting Samson's affairs in order. Over the course of their three-year-marriage, Sam had done a thorough job of turning their studio apartment into a cozy domestic nest. It had always caused Helena a great deal of anxiety to see the overflowing bookshelf, the thoroughly stocked kitchen, the carefully-chosen furniture, and the expensively-framed original artwork.

" _What if we have to flee the country, Sam? We'll need a damn cargo ship."_

He had always laughed at her for that.

 _Not so funny now that you've up and left me with all this crap, is it?_

Footsteps alerted her to an approaching presence and she jerked her eyes up from the magazine at which she had been staring blankly for the last ten minutes. She examined the lovely blonde who sat across from her, checking automatically for hidden weapons; none on her body, though she carried a rather large purse.

 _Remember, it's only paranoia if they're not actually out to get you._

The woman noticed her appraising glance, because she smiled and nodded at Helena, who returned the gesture automatically.

"Anything useful?" asked the blonde, gesturing to the magazine.

Realizing that she had no idea what she was supposed to be reading, Helena looked down at the article in from of her.

" _6 Ways to Make any Man Worship You."_

 _Awesome._

"Nothing that would save lives in a hostage situation," she sighed. "No signs that it's peer-reviewed or even empirically verified either."

"Well, I don't know much about hostage situations, but I can't imagine that you have any romantic troubles, sweetie," said the woman kindly.

Helena snorted, drawing a chuckle from her companion.

"Your imagination fails you, then."

"I'm Haley," said the woman, rising slightly to stretch her hand across the table. "I'm thinking from your reconnaissance when I walked in that you don't exactly work a desk job. FBI?"

Immediately, Helena's guard rose again. She smiled easily at Haley, shaking her hand firmly.

"Not bad. Which division do you work for?"

"Oh, I'm just a realtor. It's just that my husband does the same thing when he meets new people." She raised her left hand to display a slim silver wedding band. "He thinks I don't notice him scanning for threats when we go out to dinner."

"Ah. Yeah, jumpiness is an occupational hazard in the FBI."

"So am I right?"

"Not entirely, but you're on the right track."

"Hmm. Cagey," observed Haley, scrutinizing Helena's face. "In fact, you haven't even told me your name. So. CIA."

Helena grinned.

"My friends call me Lena. And you aren't considering the thousands of security contractors in the D.C. area."

"I'm sticking with my guess."

"It's a good one."

Haley laughed and shook her head.

"I would hate to play poker with you, Lena. That smile of yours is incredibly hard to read."

"Oh yeah, I'm a nightmare. I count cards, too."

Haley began to reply, but a pink-haired young woman interrupted them.

"Helena?" she inquired, glancing between Haley and Helena.

"That's me." Blythe leapt to her feet. "Pleased to meet you," she called over her shoulder as she followed the stylist ("Bethany," her name tag clarified) into a side room.

Bethany lathered and rinsed Helena's enormous quantity of hair without once allowing a moment's silence. Blythe learned without asking that Beth had two younger sisters, an on-and-off boyfriend of five years, and that she was weighing to pros and cons of going blonde.

"It's so much work to pull off platinum without looking trashy, you know? Full face of makeup every day if I don't want to look washed-out. But on the other hand, I'd just love to go for that 1940s femme fatale look."

Helena volunteered some remark about Barbara Stanwyck, but the majority of her thoughts were focused on holding at bay the intense panic she felt as a result of exposing her throat to a stranger in a room full of scissors and blades.

 _Calm down. This is why you ran a background check on every employee of this salon before booking an appointment._

Her hypervigilance must have been more obvious than she thought if a guileless realtor could identify her as a field agent so quickly.

Beth led her to a chair, rhapsodizing now about Helena's hair.

"Oh sweetie, these curls are to _die_ for. Just _look_ at the color. What do you want me to do with them?"

"Actually, I was hoping that you would relieve me of them," Helena admitted. "I need it out of the way completely."

Beth looked aghast.

"You want to cut it _all_ off? That's a good…" She paused to evaluate the cascade of red hair, which fell well past Blythe's waist, "eighteen inches."

"To be honest, I grew it out for a guy."

Comprehension dawned across Beth's pretty, delicate face.

"Ohhhh. You're in the 'burn everything' phase, huh? You guys must have been together for a while if your hair got this long."

"Only a year. I just… couldn't really be myself with him."

"Babe, I totally know what you mean." _That's very unlikely._ "So. Are we going full-on pixie cut? Because with that Hepburn neck of yours plus all that gorgeous bone structure, I think we're in business."  
"I put myself entirely in your hands," said the nervous spy, smiling as she kept a watchful eye on Beth's hands in the mirror.

She winced as the girl grabbed a pair of scissors, keeping a watchful eye on the blade in the mirror. Turning her back to a weapon proved even more uncomfortable than lying back to have her hair washed.

"Oh, don't worry, babe. You won't miss it," said Beth, misinterpreting Helena's expression at the sight of the scissor. "You wanna donate it, honey?"

Helena partitioned her attention conversing enthusiastically with Beth (on film in general, the merits of various silver-screen starlets-Bethany was especially partial to Lauren Bacall-, and favorite directors), monitoring the stylist's use of sharp implements, and reviewing her to-do list:

 _Distribute Sam's enormous wardrobe and library_

 _Find a new apartment_

 _Finish ridiculous busywork research assignment_

 _Submit application_

 _Screen my mother's phone calls_

 _Answer my sister's phone calls_

 _Don't think about Arkady Volkoff_

In a stroke of inspiration, she interrupted her own analysis of "Sunset Boulevard" to ask:

"Hey Beth, do you have any use for a tremendous number of hardcover books? Most of them are classic sci-fi or 20th century British poetry. I've got a lot to give away."

"Ohhhh I'm a huge sucker for poetry. Are they really up for grabs?"

"Absolutely. I'll be donating it all anyway."

"Really? You seem like the bookish type."

"Is it that obvious that I'm a tremendous geek?"

"Babe, you have strong opinions on both cinematic versions of _The Razor's Edge._ If you were trying to hide it, I'm not impressed."

"I'll have to rethink my act. And yes, I'm irredeemably bookish, but I prefer to borrow books a few at a time from the library. I've never really seen the point of accumulating them."

"Man, I wish I were that ascetic. My entire apartment has been completely overrun by books and collectible Star Trek figurines. It's awful."

"If it's any comfort, my minimalism is due entirely to deep-seated commitment issues."

"Ah, so is this giveaway part of the same purge as the haircut?"

"Two different guys, actually. The book guy had the opposite problem: he couldn't be himself around me."

Beth grinned at her in the mirror, still snipping and adjusting Helena's drastically reduced mane busily.

"You sure keep busy."

Helena snorted.

"You have no idea."

By the time Helena walked out of the salon, her head felt several pounds lighter. She felt strangely functional just at that moment; she felt like a Real Girl, not a compulsive liar built by the country's foremost organization of puppeteers. Hell, she had given her real address to a near-stranger. Of course, if Bethany had wanted to kill her, she had already been given ample opportunity.

Helena raised a hand to run her fingers through her short, tousled hair and reflected that her next undercover role would be as a hair stylist. The access to people of all sorts, the automatic conversation, and the position in a veritable thoroughfare of information, made it the perfect cover. Alexei Volkoff's barber had proved an excellent resource for Helena in the early days of her mission, especially given his unfortunate tendency to growing pliable under the influence of high-end vodka.

 _And just like that, Pinocchio returns. For three whole minutes you were thinking about something other than the Volkoff case._

She frowned and began the walk back to her apartment, her eyes constantly scanning the streets and sidewalks.

Arkady had been transferred to a pre-trial facility in Moscow last week, and since then she had heard nothing of his whereabouts. With Alexei's trial due to start in a month's time, the onslaught of depositions, meetings with state prosecutors, and negotiations with the U.S. Marshals had been endless.

 _If I never see another goddamned lawyer in my life, it'll be too soon.  
_ As she passed the courthouse, her eyes caught on a familiar figure that strode along the sidewalk as purposefully as she did. Her mind took a moment to catch up to her instincts, and she suffered a moment of pure panic before she could identify the man as SSA Aaron Hotchner, whose height and build strongly resembled the lean, loping men that Arkady kept on hand as his enforcers.

She expelled the breath that she had been holding. Contract killers did not, she knew, tend to stride around Washington D.C. in the general vicinity of the Pentagon, but her body did not seem inclined to respond to reason.

He, too, seemed to scan the crowd as he passed through it; his wary manner and ground-eating gait strongly resembled that of a large lone wolf. Helena took advantage of the few seconds before he noticed her to thoroughly enjoy the sight of his slim figure and well-kept suit, letting her eyes wander uninhibited.

As his eyes completed a sweep, they passed over her, then doubled back and widened. She grinned and raised a hand in acknowledgement. As she did so, she noted with annoyance a weak current of self-consciousness in the back of her mind.

 _What the hell do you care if he likes your haircut, woman?_

They were about thirty paces away from one another when he noticed her (enough distance for one to draw a weapon and fire if necessary-the mark of a serviceable surveillance habit), and he hesitated before closing the distance.

"Agent Blythe," he said, shaking her hand and sparing her a small smile. "I barely recognize you without the purple bruise on your cheek."

Helena nodded mournfully, finding that she still enjoyed his musical baritone voice.

"They refuse to let me out of the office to get another one," she replied plaintively. "I'm reduced to picking fights with baristas who make my coffee lukewarm."

"Quite a step down, then."

"Desk work is a really special ring of hell."

He chuckled, but it did not reach the serious expression in his eyes.

"I'm surprised that they've already let you go back to work in any capacity," he remarked. "Shouldn't you still be on leave?"

"Oh god, not you too," she exclaimed, throwing up her hands. "My supervisor believed-correctly, by the way-that the boredom would drive me to far more dangerous, suture-ripping extremes than I could reach at Langley. So she's keeping me busy with doctor-approved activities."

"Speaking of suture-ripping extremes," he said, his expression suddenly… could it be _bashful?_ "I have a proposal for you."

She raised a brow and grinned.

"That's a very promising introduction."

"Well, I was planning to discuss it with you after you had a few more months to recover, but since you're clearly up and kicking already…"

"Fire away. But only metaphorically, if you please."

"No promises. Anyway, what I wanted to tell you is that we have an opening at the BAU. We're running an open search to fill the position and several members of the team have remarked that your experience with languages, organized crime, and undercover work could be of use."

Helena stared at him, sincerely surprised.

"You think I should apply for the position?"

"Personally, I think you'd be an enormous pain in the ass," he said, one corner of his mouth quirking upward.

"Well of course, that's a given."

"But what I call pure bloody-mindedness, Gideon calls grit."

"Tomato tomahto. Are you as much of a hard-ass as Morgan says you are?"

"More."

"Work-life balance?"

"I don't know what that means."

"Blood and gore?"

"All day, every day."

"Huh. Sounds pretty bleak."

"Completely."

"How long do I have to decide whether to apply?"

"The deadline is in a month. I warn you, though, you have a very good chance of getting the job."

"I'll have to think about it. Always good to talk to you, Hotch."

He inclined his head, looking slightly awkward, and turned to leave.

"Oh wait-" she called out, fishing in her backpack for a slim manilla folder. "I have something for you." She held it out to him, watching his face as he took the file and flipped through it.

Finally he raised his eyes to hers, scowling severely down at her.

"This is an application," he said flatly.

"Indeed it is."

"For the BAU."

"Precisely as you say. You're on fire today, Hotch."

"You were already planning to apply."

"Looks that way."

"But you let me do a sale's pitch anyway."

"I was playing hard to get. You're a lousy salesman, by the way."

"We haven't even announced the search yet."

"Now, what kind of spy would I be if I didn't keep track of things like that?"

"A significantly less irritating one."

"I would have asked you about the opening, but I didn't want to trade on our friendship," she explained, enjoying his bemused expression. Most of Aaron Hotchner's expressions involved a furrowed brow, but there were, she had discovered, infinitely many tiny variations on that theme. If one did not take the time to note the slight changes around his mouth and eyes, it would be easy to think him severe and rigid.

 _That is, if one weren't prone to creepy gawking like you are, Blythe._

"Well," he said with a shrug, "Gideon doesn't have the same qualms, apparently."

"Oh, incidentally, are you looking for any books? I have an enormous collection to dispose of, and it's turning into a first-come first-served sort of deal."

Hotch's scowl broke out into a full-fledged grin.

"Typical spy," he teased. "Can't stand having anything you can't take on the run, right?"

"Exactly."

"I'll ask my wife. She's the uncontested authority on what's allowed in the house."

Somehow, the mention of Hotchner's marital state seemed to jolt them both out of the flow of the conversation. They had been standing quite close together, leaning in slightly, and both of them had unconsciously ceased their constant examination of the surroundings. Now, Helena's eyes resumed their sweeping motion over the waves of passersby, and Hotch cleared his throat.

"You should bring her by!" exclaimed Helena, far too enthusiastically. "She can choose for herself. I think Sam got a few first-editions of Robert Frost, if you're into that sort of thing. You know where I live, I think."

"You're sure you don't mind?"

"It would be doing me a favor. Those books deserve to be loved. There are a few other foragers coming over tomorrow evening around 7:00 if you're worried about imposing-What?"

Hotch had been studying her face with an expression of concern. His scrutiny brought a flush to her cheeks and put her on the defensive.

"Are you talking to someone to deal with the grief?"

"Believe me, I couldn't escape my therapist even in the deepest reaches of Hell. I have tried."

"I mean a friend. Someone that the CIA didn't force on you."

She snorted, absent-mindedly tracing the nicotine patch in the crook of her right elbow with her fingertip.

"I come from a long line of Irish Catholic yuppies. We don't _talk._ We drink and write run-on sentences.

"Anyway, believe it or not, I don't know a lot of people who can really identify closely with the 23-year-old widow of a closeted gay man."

"Well look. If you do need to talk some time, you know how to reach me. I think I understand 'complicated' pretty well."

They parted ways shortly afterwards, leaving Helena to stride back to the apartment that she had shared with Samson for three years. She had already stripped away almost all of his careful decoration, given away his copious knick-knacks, and sold most of the nonessential furniture. Now, stark and bare apart from stacks of books and paintings, the studio looked less eerily haunted by the specter of their marriage.

Helena stood on the tips of her toes to reach the bottle of gin in the kitchen. Her hollow attempt to make it harder for herself to indulge that particular vice.

She unscrewed the cap and took long swigs, letting the crisp, citrusy alcohol bathe her in heady oblivion.

 _Or sometimes we just drink._

* * *

 **Author's Note: I'm sorry that this chapter is so transitional and uneventful. It is important to the story, I think, to see the pervasive but understated effects of trauma in Helena's life, which is really the only point of such a pedestrian installment. I do have some nice, twisted cases that I'd like to write soon.**


	9. Cold Turkey

" **God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,**

 **Courage to change the things I can,**

 **And wisdom to know the difference."**

 **-Serenity prayer**

 **7:30 PM, July 15, 2004**

 **Langley, VA**

Helena glared at her computer screen, willing herself to focus on the task at hand. She felt oddly out of place in her familiar surroundings, called by her own name, working at a safe distance from the threat that she investigated. Life as a data analyst had never really suited her craving for action and involvement.

She frowned and continued to type her report, shaking her head to clear it of the increasingly insistent memories that appeared as bright, technicolor plays behind her eyes.

Glancing down at the nicotine patch on her arm, she fought the impulse to duck out of the oppressive CIA offices for the gratify the urge that she had been fighting since her return.

Helena Blythe was _bored._ Bored field agents, she knew, were more of a liability than an asset, and she itched to ask for another assignment.

 _They wouldn't give it to you. You're officially a headcase now._

The psychological evaluation upon her return to Langley had not gone as well as she had hoped.

" _Hypervigilant, prone to bouts of suicidal rashness, secretive, suppressing intense grief and trauma. Subject should by no means be returned to field duty until her issues are resolved."_

 _Well fuck you too, Dr. Hill. At least I'm not divorcing yet another wife and sleeping with my receptionist._

She hadn't quite said it out loud, but she had been sorely tempted to.

Arkady's deportation had been put into effect a full month ago and Helena now had no way of knowing where he was, though she checked her sources constantly.

" _Relax, my dear,"_ Simon had assured soothingly from his London office, " _Even in Russia, Arkady will be put in prison. Your evidence was solid; it would be a diplomatic catastrophe for them if they didn't put him away."_

But neither of them truly believed that a man like Arkady Volkoff would be imprisoned for long. She felt a deep pit in her stomach when she thought of Vasil and Nina. She had told Volkoff that they were her informants, never thinking that he would be free long enough to act on the information.

Logically, she knew that he would have discovered it anyway; Vasil was set to testify at the trials of several of the high-ranking members of the syndicate. That knowledge, however, had no power to assuage the pit of guilt and fear that remained in her stomach as a personal fixture. Witness Protection was far from a guarantee of her informant's safety.

"Hey Blythe, are you going to stay here all night?"

She glanced around to see her supervisor, Brianna Winters, watching her closely.

"Signs point to 'yes,'" she said ruefully. "I really ought to get this report done tonight."

"That's bull," Winters informed her with all her customary bluntness. "I've seen your inbox. You're well ahead of schedule, you freakish workaholic."

"That's because I stay here all night."

"Come on, join us for drinks just this once. Doctor's orders."

"You do realize that a Ph.D. in international affairs doesn't even remotely equate to a medical license, right?"

"Damn straight it doesn't. It's way better."

"I really shouldn't drink."

"You absolutely should drink. That's what grounded field agents do."

"Can't you just let me sulk?"

"Sure, but that's better done with a stiff bourbon in your hand. Come on."

* * *

 **Washington D.C.**

As usual, Helena found herself glad that she had heeded the imperious Dr. Winters. Lounging at the bar, joking with her colleagues, Helena sipped her whiskey with relish, feeling the alcohol blunt the edges of her anxiety. So pleasantly intoxicated was she that she did not notice when Winters discreetly jerked her head at the other agents, so that they slipped away to the far side of the bar.

"So," began Brianna, turning to eye Helena critically, "did you remember that it's your birthday today?"

Helena's eyebrows shot up. July 15th. Normally Samson had reminded her of her birthdays by taking her to the opera and making croque-madames. Without the ritual, she had forgotten entirely.

"You're turning 24, right?" continued her supervisor, scrutinizing her face. Helena nodded, fixing her eyes on the liquid in her glass. Winters whistled, shaking her head. "I keep forgetting that you're still a kid. You started so young."

"The CIA started paying my tuition when I was 16," Helena volunteered, still not looking at Winters. "The Agency has been a pretty decent sugar daddy, as those things go."

Winters chuckled and drained her glass, shaking back her silver-flecked dark hair.

"You should get the hell out while you still have a life ahead of you, Blythe."

The statement took Helena so completely by surprise that she choked on her next mouthful of whiskey, turning to look incredulously at her unfathomable boss.

"Oh, don't look so shocked," the brunette continued. "I know have a reputation as an Agency automaton, but that doesn't mean that I enjoy watching my subordinates fall to pieces right in front of me. Do you even remember who you were five years ago, Blythe? Do you remember being able to stand with your back to a door? Getting a full night's sleep without waking up in a cold sweat when the neighbor's cat yowls?"

Helena considered as she studied the older woman's expression; the harsh, angular beauty of Winters's face had softened slightly, and her normally impassive brow had furrowed.

It was, indeed, true that the CIA had dominated her life since her troubled adolescence; she had pledged herself to the CIA at the age of 16 in exchange for a college education, and since then she had known nothing apart from the exigencies of the Agency. Everything about her, from her academic achievements to her marriage, had been built around a budding career as an analyst and field operative; the CIA had formed her identity to suit their needs, casting away the parts of her that did not suit them.

"I've been an analyst since I was 19, ma'am. I started my first undercover mission on the day after my honeymoon. I don't think I could go back to civilian life now."

"Blythe, do you realize that you didn't even take time to grieve your husband before coming back to work? I don't think I've heard you mention him once since you got back. All you talk about is your damn mission and Arkady fucking Volkoff."

"There's nothing I can do for Sam. There's still a possibility of recovering Volkoff."

"My point," continued Winters determinedly, "is that I've seen agents on your trajectory. The ones who seem intent upon sublimating their own humanity. And the Agency if more than happy to let them, because they make fantastic operatives until they go up in flames.

"Look, Blythe, I don't pretend to know what you're running away from. What happened in that Gramercy Park penthouse when you were a kid. God knows there are enough rumors. But you can start over now. You're young, you're smart, you could have the world at your feet. I'm sick of watching you waste away at Langley."

"I wouldn't be wasting away if you would put me out in the field again," Helena snapped. Winters's allusion to her childhood had piqued her.

"As far as the CIA is concerned, Helena, you're too compromised to return to the field. But from what I've seen, desk work is just as damaging."

"So what am I supposed to do? Work in a flower shop? With my skill set, the only other job that I'm fully qualified for is high-class whore."

"Don't be melodramatic. You have plenty of options, and almost any of them would be better for you than what you're doing right now. But let me be clear: I don't think the BAU is the right choice."

Again, Helena choked in the middle of a long swig. _I hate spies._

"Could you at least pretend not to know everything?" she sighed when she had stopped coughing. Winters appeared scandalized.

"Goodness, no. That would be disingenuous," she chided Helena, drawing genuine laughter from her.

"Look, the BAU application was a long shot. I saw David Rossi speak once or twice when I was at UPenn and developed a bit of a fascination with profiling-"

"... and when you met Aaron Hotchner and saw how they operate, you got curious again. I understand, Blythe. It would be a good assignment for you if you weren't such a wreck."

"It's better than being sentenced to desk work for the rest of my career."

"I don't think that's true."

"Oh come on, Winters. You were the Agency's best undercover operative for thirty years. You're not in a great position to lecture me on the dangers of field work."

"Alright, Blythe. Here it is: if you stay with the CIA, you're going to be warming the bench for a long time. If the BAU is what you want, I'll support your transfer and make sure that it goes smoothly. I've worked with Jason Gideon before, and he's an excellent man, if a bit autocratic.

"But please take a few days to consider whether work like that will reopen old wounds for you. Because if there's one thing I know about the BAU, it's that every one of their agents falls apart eventually."

"You know, a friend of mine suggested that I give up the CIA and cigarettes."

"I'd say that it was good advice, except that it came from the same friend who told you to apply to the BAU."

Helena shot Winters a reproachful look.  
"You know, at some point 'well-informed' becomes indistinguishable from 'creepy,'" she said petulantly.

"I'll keep it in mind. Also, you should buy more milk. You're running a bit low."

* * *

 **August 13, 2004**

 **Langley, VA**

Helena had spent the last month in a haze of ennui. Her panic attacks and nightmares become gradually less frequent, but they had been replaced by a persistent feeling of exhaustion. She made a concerted effort to spend at least one evening per week out with her coworkers, beating Winters at billiards and the others at poker. Every night, in the apartment that felt to her like a mausoleum, she buried herself in one of the few books she had kept and a large glass of Scotch, warding away the creeping anxiety and insomnia with liquor and science fiction.

There had still been no word of Volkoff's trial, and even Simon was unable to ascertain whether he was to be tried at all.

 _What's the point of being the honorary god-daughter of the mastermind of MI-6 if he can't even find me one Russian mobster?_ she sulked to herself, typing swiftly at her desk.

"Blythe, Winters wants you in her office ten minutes ago."

Helena glanced up at the speckled, youthful face of Tommy French, the youngest and most outlandishly brilliant of the CIA's technical analysts.

"Thanks, Junior. Nice tie, by the way," she said as she rose from her desk, gesturing at the Spider Man cravat the teenaged genius wore over his short-sleeved button-down shirt. The boy scowled at the epithet, but blushed at her half-facetious compliment, clearly in turmoil.

Helena brushed past the boy, making her way to Winters's handsome wood-paneled office. Brianna had once explained to her that anyone who complimented the pretentious decor immediately identified themselves as either a sycophant or an aspiring egomaniac.

In front of Brianna's enormous oak desk stood two men. One was an enormously tall, strapping man in his early sixties, gray-haired, weatherbeaten. His black suit contrasted oddly with his rumpled hair and the stubble on his cleft chin and brutally square jaw. He appraised her critically through steely gray eyes, brows drawn together. The other was a broad-shouldered middle-aged man with close-cropped dark hair, a craggy, rugged face, and the air of a college mathematics professor. He shot her a kindly smile, but it was belied by the watchful gaze of his wary black eyes.

"Ms. Blythe," he began, holding out his hand to her as she turned to face him, "I'm SSA Jason Gideon with the BAU. This is my associate, SSA Jack Flynn."

"Agent Gideon," she said, forcing a smile and shaking the proffered hand, "it's an honor to meet you in person. And Agent Flynn," she continued, offering her hand to him, "Aaron Hotchner has only good things to say about your work with obsessional crime."

Flynn grinned wolfishly.

"Funny, he told me that you're the best liar he's ever met," he replied, provoking a genuine smile from her this time.

"I didn't say that's _all_ he told me about you."

Winters cleared her throat, snapping Blythe's attention back to her instantly.

"Agent Gideon is here to discuss the possibility of transferring you to the BAU."

Blythe's eyes widened, but she remained silent and waited for Winters to continue.

"You already know my thoughts on the matter, Blythe, but I stand by my word. If you take the offer, you are to start in Quantico on Monday."

"Understood, ma'am."

"These gentlemen believe that they are well-equipped to make use of your talents and keep you stable. I disagree, but I won't stop you if this is what you want."

"It is, ma'am."

"That's the spirit," interjected Agent Flynn, his sallow face breaking into another grin. He clapped Helena on the shoulder with nearly enough force to knock her sideways. Winters winced.

"Please don't bruise her until she's under your roof, boys. I need her in working order at least until 7."

"Sorry, Brie," Gideon said with an apologetic shrug. "I'm working on getting him a shock collar."

"Blythe, I've sent you a list of tasks that I need finished before you leave tonight. Hand your report off to Donaldson."

Helena acknowledged her superior with a deferential " _yes ma'am,"_ thanked Gideon and Flynn with a giddy smile, and retired back to her desk to wrap up her life. She reeled at the abruptness with which her tenure at the CIA had ended after years of single-minded dedication.

The evening, she glanced around her desk, realizing that she had no personal effects to take except for a standard-issue Agency mug. She washed it out and left it near the espresso machine before leaving the building for the last time.

For most of the night, she wandered the streets of D.C., lost, empty, and free.


	10. Where the Wild Roses Grow

" _I believe that lovers should be chained together_

 _And thrown into a fire with their songs and letters_

 _And left there to burn_

 _Left there to burn in their arrogance"_

 _-Bright Eyes,_ "A Perfect Sonnet"

 **August 16, 2004**

 **Quantico, VA**

Helena's first morning at the BAU began, as one might expect, with blood and adrenaline.

The gawky young agent tasked with her orientation had left her briefly in the kitchen to accommodate her caffeine craving, and she reluctantly turned her back to the door to prepare the correct cocktail of sugar and cream that would make the muddy drip coffee bearable. She shuddered as she took a sip, set the mug back down and reached for the creamer again. It was then that she felt a silent presence at her shoulder, betrayed only by a soft rustle of breath. Instinctively, she spun around, throwing out her elbow to catch her intruder squarely in the gut, forcing them to double over so that their nose met her knee as she brought it upwards.

Only when the burly man was staggering back, clutching his nose and swearing, did she pause long enough to recognize him as Jason Gideon.

 _Oh nice. Break the boss's nose on your first day. Why not just set fire to the whole building while you're at it?_

" _Fuck_ , Agent Gideon, I'm so sorry."

The man was still bent double, holding his middle and gasping, perplexing and worrying Helena. Had she broken one of his ribs?

"Agent Gideon?"

Slowly, he straightened, wiping his eyes. Tears.

He was _laughing._

"Holy hypervigilance, Blythe," a new voice said from the doorway. Jack Flynn leaned his colossal shoulder on the frame, grinning from ear to ear. "That's a hell of an elbow you've got there."

"Must be all the cream she puts in her coffee," remarked Gideon, his breath apparently recovered. He crossed to the counter and moistened a paper towel to press to the generous blood flow from his nose. "The girl's chock-full of calcium. And tooth cavities, I assume."

Helena feigned indignation, deciding that the best way out of the awkwardness was to participate in the japery.

"I don't normally drown my coffee that way. But I'm fairly sure that this… concoction is made of soot."

"We get the ashes straight from the coroner's office," Flynn confirmed solemnly. "Freshly cremated."

"If you're finished hazing the rookie, gentlemen, we've got a case in the briefing room."

Hotch's deep, mellifluous voice, emanating from somewhere behind the monolith that was Jack Flynn, had a curiously soothing effect on Helena, who had been painfully tense since she had arrived.

"Already? It's only 8:00. We still have two more hours to scare her off."

Hotch squeezed past Flynn into the increasingly cramped kitchen. With a glance, he took in the bloodied Gideon and the apologetic Blythe, remarking only:

"Blythe, you got blood on your trousers."

She glanced down, and noticing the smear of red on her right knee with which she had hit Gideon.

"Damn. My dry-cleaner will kill me."

"What did Gideon do to earn the bloody nose?" he asked conversationally.

"Oh, nothing really. I just make it a point to draw blood within my first hour in a new milieu. Assert dominance, you know."

Hotch nodded absently, turning to Jack.

"I think this is a full-team kind of case. We need to move quickly, or I would have run it by you first."

The older agent waved his hand dismissively.

"You don't have to keep running to me, sport. Hell, you can do the case selection yourself if you like."

"Nice try. That pleasure's still all yours." He glanced back at Helena and noted her quizzical expression. "Jack likes to try to Tom Sawyer me into taking on his workload. Now will you all come to briefing? I'm aiming for wheels up in an hour."

Helena's stomach flipped uncomfortably. A case within her first hour at the BAU seemed excessive. And yet, she already felt the familiar, heady feeling rising through her bloodstream. The mingling of curiosity, suspense, and excitement that came at the beginning of a new novel or a fresh mission. It must have shown in her expression and posture, because Gideon chuckled.

"She's an eager one, isn't she?"

Hotch led them to the briefing room and Helena allowed her eyes to wander appreciatively over his strapping frame. He cut quite a figure, striding authoritatively through headquarters. Helena noted the deferential treatment he received from the agents in the bullpen; though he held no official position in the leadership of the unit, he seemed to act as the third member of Gideon and Flynn's triumvirate.

At the round table in the briefing room, she settled between Flynn and the jumpy boy who had been with Hotch in Chicago. (Reid, she recalled with some difficulty-that day had passed in such a haze.)

"Hi," he said in a small voice. She gave him her most unthreatening smile, which he hesitantly returned. He was, she noted, quite a beautiful specimen in his own way: tall and rather too thin, with a romantic, consumptive face. His enormous dark eyes flicked over her face with guileless curiosity.

"Good to see you under less dire circumstances, Doc."

"Can I ask you something that's been bothering me for months?"

"Later, Reid," interjected Hotch. Reid jumped and fixed his eyes immediately upon his superior. "You can interrogate her on the plane.

"We have a series of suspicious deaths in New York," he continued, addressing the whole room."

Flynn passed Helena a stack of photographs, which she began to peruse with growing disgust; the first body, already in an advanced state of decay, belonged to what might once have been a slender blonde in skimpy clothing. The remnants of her skin sported fragments of tattoos.

The second body, that of a black woman in her thirties, appeared to be more recent. Her body, frozen in its final pose, was horrifically contorted as though in agony. Her woolen pant suit and practical leather shoes suggested

The last body was fresh and young. The olive-skinned girl could not have been older than fourteen, and her body was bent backward into an arch, her face twisted in mingled panic and pain. Helena's hands shook as she examined the last victim, her eyes flicking over the marks on the girl's inner thighs and forearms. Her makeup was heavy and excessively dark, ringing her eyes in thick kohl.

Her mind raced, and she struggled to restrain it from settling upon the immediate conclusion that jumped out at her.

"Blythe?"

She jerked her head up to return Hotch's gaze, marshalling her features into a tranquil expression.

"Sir?"

"Are you up to this? No one would blame you for sitting this one out and focusing on getting acclimated."

Helena bristled, but quickly reminded herself that Hotch meant to be kind. She forced a convincing smile.

"Thank you, sir, but I can handle it. Where better to learn than in the field?"

Hotch looked a far cry from convinced, but Flynn clapped her on the back (once again with bruising force) and Morgan winked at her from across the table.

"We've got three women found buried in the woods outside of Seattle. They've all been positively identified, but nothing will be released to the press until we say so. Kelly Jones, 27, prostitute. She was never declared missing, but she's been dead for about four months. Sophie Jackson, 34, worked for Prometheus, a successful tech startup. She was declared missing two weeks ago and she appears to have been killed at around that time.-"

"So the unsub doesn't keep them for long."

"It doesn't seem likely that there's any abduction at all. Deaths are consistent with strychnine poisoning. No defensive wounds were found on the bodies."

"What about the last victim?" Helena cut in, her heart in her throat. The face in the picture was so very young.

"Elicia Diaz, 13. She hadn't been reported missing yet. She's been dead for less than three days."

"Evidence of self-harm," she observed, attempting to sound casual.

"Yes, and a lengthy disciplinary record. She was a troubled girl. If it weren't for Sophie Jackson, there would be a relatively strong correlation between the victims. As it is, though, victimology is all over the place."

"Can I see the pictures of Elicia Diaz, Blythe?" asked Morgan suddenly. She passed him the folder, noticing his brows knit as he examined the photographs.

"The scattershot victimology doesn't fit such an organized killer. It's not that easy to slip someone strychnine," reflected Blythe, leaning back and staring at the ceiling to clear the images from her mind's eye. "You'd need to fix them a strong drink or find a way to force them to inhale it."

"The cycle's getting shorter. How were the bodies found?"

"Anonymous tip to local police. Traced to a phone booth."

"The killer?"

"Yeah. The voice was too heavily distorted to yield any details."

"Well," said Gideon, speaking slowly, "I'm convinced. Wheels up in 30, everyone."

The team rose quickly and quietly and trooped out of the briefing room. Helena exited last, casting a glance back at the innocuous-looking folder on the round table.

"Hey, Duchess."

"Yeah?" she responded, shifting her gaze to Flynn, who had turned back to address her.

"You got a go-bag?"

"Pfft." She waved a dismissive hand and grinned at him. "I was _born_ with a go-bag. Race you to the jet."

* * *

As the jet taxied off the runway, Helena leaned back and closed her eyes, weighing the evidence in her mind, chiding herself. She was dangerously close to fixating on the last victim, excluding the others from her thought process. The signs were so familiar, so obvious.

 _Zoom out. Patterns. Look for_ patterns, _woman. Objectivity above all._

"Blythe, what are your thoughts on Diaz?"

Her eyes snapped open and she jerked her head around to stare at Gideon, who sat beside her.

 _So much for the zooming out stratagem._

Hotch watched the girl sitting across from him, taking in the tightness around her mouth and the wideness of her bright eyes. When Gideon addressed her, he saw her expression falter for a moment, a contortion of what looked like pain.

"I…" she hesitated, lowering her eyes and breathing in. When she resumed eye contact with Gideon, her expression had cleared. "I don't want to jump the gun, sir. Especially since the characteristics that caught my eye don't help to establish a general victimology. I'll keep an eye out and let you know if my hunch yields anything."

Flynn shifted next to Hotch, leaning forward across the table.

"I know that this isn't how you C.I. types do things, but in the BAU, we share our ideas."

Blythe stared at him, her expression unreadable.

"I have reason to believe that my personal experiences may be biasing my observations. I don't want to derail the investigation with premature-"

"We promise not to take you too seriously," said Gideon, smiling gently.

"Well, again, I'm speculating wildly here. But… the makeup, the juvenile record, the self-harm. This girl is trying to act older than she is, she's self-loathing, and she has a problem with authority. I don't want to project, but to me it screams sexual abuse."

Gideon leaned back, appearing to examine the table in minute detail. The silence stretched. Hotch watched Blythe as discreetly as he could. She was trying unsuccessfully to behave casually, twirling a pen around her slim white fingers and occasionally making eye contact with one of her curious colleagues.

Finally, Morgan broke the silence.  
"I agree, actually. I've seen a case or two like this in Chicago. It's a theory that fits the information-"

"But by no means the only theory that would fit," Blythe interjected hurriedly. "Obviously it needs substantiation."

"We're going to have to do some serious digging on the victims anyway. A killer this organized is almost certain to have a methodology for picking his victims. We'll find a link eventually. Blythe, you can investigate Elicia. Jack-"

"I'll go with her," said Flynn, nodding. Blythe smiled at him, and Hotch had to wrestle down a feeling of inexplicable disappointment.

"Alright, other impressions?"

"The first victim had the poison injected directly into her vein," said Reid, brow furrowed. "Coroner reports signs of a heroin habit. But both of the other victims ingested the strychnine orally."

"The unsub convinced three very different women to consume poison, apparently without resistance."

"That bothers me. I don't know a single city girl who would drink something that's been out of her sight for a moment. So how did he get Jackson?"

"Blythe, who would you trust to fix you a drink out of your line of sight?"

"Me personally?" she asked with a wry smile. "Nobody. If I went down a few levels in paranoia, though… I could see it from anyone clearly unthreatening: a child or someone I'd known for a few years, especially if I had reason to believe that they weren't interested in me sexually. Married, straight woman, or gay man."

"It's hard to place the unsub demographically given the inconsistent victimology. The crimes aren't obviously sexually sadistic in nature, but a series of female victims, all fairly young? It points towards a male killer."

"Let's focus on the victims for now. The unsub will just have to wait."

* * *

 **Seattle, Washington**

Helena bit back her frustration. Ellie Diaz's teachers seemed to be unable to comment on anything other than the girl's penchant for questioning authority and collecting detentions. She had neither friends nor hobbies, kept her nose in cheap paperbacks during lunch break, and turned in messy, half-completed assignments.

The mulish middle-aged English teacher that Blythe and Flynn were currently interviewing, and who had taken immediate exception to Helena's increasingly accusatory tone, glared with unconcealed hostility at the two agents.

"You're telling me that you don't have a single one of her essays or reports?"

"That's what I said, isn't it?"

"What did she like to read? Romance novels? Fantasy?"

' "How would I know? The little brat took off first after every class."

"Ms. Pitt," interjected Flynn, his manner apologetic and deferential, "we're so sorry to have wasted your time. May I ask just one more question?"

He threw her a twinkling smile as he leaned on Ms. Pitt's desk. The homely woman altered her expression instantly, her face taking on a look of grotesque coquettishness.

"Yeah, I guess."

"Who's in charge of detention here? Is there some teacher who stays with the kids?"

"You're looking for Lloyd Franklin. He volunteered for the job, God knows why. Nice man, but too soft. Much nicer to those delinquent brats than they deserve, if you ask me."

When they left Pitt's classroom, it was with a room number for Franklin and a phone number for Pitt herself. The latter, Flynn quickly discarded with a shudder.

"It's never the pretty ones who throw themselves at me," he said plaintively. "Why don't they ever look like you, Duchess?"

"If you laid it on as thick with me as you did with that harpy, Flynn, you might end up with my phone number too."

Flynn chuckled.

"Or a stiletto to the throat."

"High risk, high reward, darling."

"I bet you are."

She laughed, finding herself enjoying the relaxed, low-stakes flirtation. Jack Flynn had nothing to prove and everything to teach her, and it had been a long time since she had met a man without an agenda.

"Shall we interview Franklin today?" she asked, reminding herself that he was, in fact, her superior despite his apparent inability to behave formally.

"Oh, I think so. We can uproot the girl's room this evening."

They knocked at the classroom door, and it was thrown open immediately.

"Jenny, you're late agai-Oh. Hello." The man at the door blinked in surprise at the sight of the beauty and the behemoth. "Can I help you?"

He was an undeniably attractive man in his mid-forties, dressed in slacks and a button-down shirt that traced a well-formed frame. His face was kind and his eyes a warm blue and prone to crinkling at the edges.

"Mr. Franklin, we're special agents Flynn and Blythe. We were hoping to ask you some questions. Could you step outside for a few minutes?"

"I'm with a class. Well, with detainees, technically-"

"It won't take long," volunteered Helena with her most charming smile. If Flynn could do it, she could too. The effect was gratifyingly quick; Franklin's eyes caught on her and traced the familiar path between her eyes, her lips, and her figure. "It's about one of your more frequent visitors," she continued. "Elicia Diaz?"

At the mention of the name, the man's eyes snapped back to hers from their meandering path down her torso. In the split second after their eyes met, Blythe saw a hard, shrewd expression flash over his face. It vanished so swiftly that she might easily have believed it a figment of her imagination if she hadn't noted as well the tightening of his left hand into a white-knuckled fist. Or the wedding ring thereupon.

"Elicia. Yes, she hasn't been in for a few days. I took it as a good sign. She's not in any trouble, is she?"

"We're just making a few inquiries," Flynn assured him. "She may have information pertinent to an ongoing investigation."

Franklin's eyebrows shot up and his pupils dilated. He struggled to compose his face into an expression of mild interest.

 _Well that scared the shit out of him._

A quick glance at Jack told her that he was thinking along similar lines.

"Do you know anything about Elicia's social life, Mr. Franklin?" asked Flynn, pressing their advantage.  
"Only that she doesn't have much of one. She's never fit in with the other detention regulars."

"How so?"

"Ellie's… mature for her age. She liked to read. She listens to different music. She's an old soul. Not like other kids her age at all."

Helena felt a shiver run down her spine at the familiarity of the phrases.

 _You disgusting son of a bitch._

Then: _Don't jump the gun, Blythe._

"Ms. Pitt told us that you take a personal interest in your students-"

"What's that supposed to mean?" demanded the man with sudden aggression.

Helena smiled and held her hand up in a pacifying gesture.

 _Bingo._

"I was trying to pay you a compliment, Mr. Franklin. It's so uplifting to see a teacher reaching out to troubled students without an ulterior motive."

While Franklin was settling his ruffled feathers, Flynn struck.

"Did Elicia have a boyfriend, sir? Was she sexually active with one of her peers?"

The question, levelled while he was still recovering from the presumed allegation, caught him off-balance. An ugly grimace twisted his mouth.

"Of course not. Ellie would never mess around with pubescent goons. I told you. She's too mature for that."

"Right. Thank you for your time, Mr. Franklin."

Flynn wrapped a large hand around Blythe's forearm and steered her firmly away from the door.

"Thanks," she murmured. "I think I was about to kill him."

* * *

Hotch and Morgan stood together in the foyer of the Prometheus premises, weighing the gossip that they had gathered.

"So she was sleeping with her boss. What does it matter? She still doesn't fit in with the other victims."

"But it does add another dimension to the victimology."

"A prostitute, a sex abuse victim, and a woman sleeping with her married boss? That's not even a connection, even if Blythe's hunch pans out.

"And speaking of Blythe, are you okay to work with her?"

Hotch turned an icy glare on Morgan.

"Excuse me?"

"Look, I don't want to pry into your private life, but come on, Hotch. You've got a soft spot the size of Siberia for that girl."

"I'm a happily married man, Morgan. That's all there is to say-"

"Coffee, gentlemen?"

The men spun around to face the small, crumpled woman who pushed the coffee cart. She smiled, her face transforming into a complex series of folds and wrinkles.

"No thank you, ma'am. We were just leaving."

* * *

Hotch and Morgan returned to the police station in tense silence. Morgan glanced occasionally at Hotch, whose face was set in a hard, unreadable mask.

Flynn, Helena, Reid, and Gideon had already arrived and set up an evidence board. They stood in a huddle, heads bent over a shoebox.

"Morgan, looks like you and Blythe were right about the third victim. She's been living the contents of Lolita for about a year from the looks of it."

"Is that confirmed?"

"We don't have a confession, but the evidence is pretty clear. Look."

Hotch and Morgan moved forward to examine the contents of the box: an expensive-looking opal necklace, a pair of ticket stubs for _The Life Aquatic,_ a hardcover anthology of Romantic poetry, a charm bracelet, an envelope marked "to my beloved Ellie," and a boxcutter. On the interior of the flimsy cardboard, Morgan noted what appeared to be drops of dried blood.

"Goddammit," he muttered, eyes fixed on the macabre keepsakes. "Who?"

"The teacher who runs detention at her school. We met him today."

"You're sure?"

"We don't have incontrovertible proof yet," admitted Blythe, whose face was very pale and tense, "but I'm confident that the handwriting in that letter will match his. Or alternatively, if we bring him in I can promise you a confession."

Gideon shot her a sharp look.

"Blythe, I need to know that you can keep your head through this. If you start taking this personally-"

"I can and I'm not. All I meant was that I'm good at getting information out of people."

Gideon did not look convinced in the slightest, but he turned reluctantly to the newly arrived agents.

"What did you find out about Jackson?"

"Well, for one thing, she was a teetotaler. However she was poisoned, it almost certainly wasn't through an alcoholic beverage."

"Curiouser and curiouser," murmured Blythe. "So what did she consume that could conceal the taste of the strychnine?"

"She was incredibly frugal. Packed lunch, snacks, and dinner every day, never ate out, and spent every minute from 7:00 in the morning to 10:00 at night in the office. First to arrive, last to leave type of worker, apparently."

"That's an incredibly low-risk victim. Poisoning her would take work. So much for murders of opportunity."

"She had one vice, though. She had a long-standing ongoing affair with her direct supervisor," said Hotch. "We got confirmation from the man himself. He was on vacation in Munich when Jackson died, though."

"Well that's an obvious lie," said Flynn with a derisive snort. "Who goes to Munich for a vacation?"

"Actually, Munich's technical museum is-"

"Reid," Gideon interrupted, preempting the tangent, "he was joking."

"What do we know about the first victim?"

"We have her little black book. Garcia's running through the names now. Looks like our girl worked more hours a week than we do."

"Her last roommate told us that Jones had gotten clean by the end, but that she was struggling. She had fallen in love with one of her clients, thought he would leave his wife for her. But then he cut contact and moved out of the city with his family two days before she disappeared. When she disappeared, the roommate assumed that she had fallen off the wagon and taken off."

"Easy pickings, in other words. All the unsub would have to do is wave the tainted heroin under her nose."

"But the question remains, how the hell do the victims fit together? It's increasingly unlikely that they were picked at random."

"Blythe, the teacher who molested Diaz, is he married?" asked Hotch suddenly.

She raised a brow at him and nodded.

"I think that's it," he said, and Helena's eyes widened in comprehension that apparently no one else shared.

"You're going to have to be a little more explicit," Flynn told him.

"They're homewreckers," murmured Blythe, her gaze wandering over the faces of the three victims. "They were all involved with married men."

Morgan shook his head.

"That's ridiculous. The situations were all completely different. Diaz was a _kid,_ for God's sake."

"And no one knew about Franklin's abuse," added Flynn. "How would the unsub figure it out?"

"They went out together if the movie tickets are any indication. The unsub could have seen them."

"Is this really a productive line of inquiry?"

"It's the closest thing to a connection that we can find. I think it's worth exploring, don't you?"

"So, what kind of unsub would go after the affair partner instead of the adulterer? A woman scorned?"

"It's quite common to blame the other woman. I think we should look at divorces in Seattle over the last year and cross-check them with people involved in the lives of the victims."

"How do we even find the cross-section between the people in the victims' lives?"

"Well, it's someone who successfully got each of the victims alone. That suggests some level of trust. And it's someone who knew about the affairs."

"And someone who _wanted_ the bodies found, which means that the unsub was confident that he _or she_ couldn't be connected to the bodies."

"We should focus on Jackson. She'd have been the hardest to poison."

"It would most likely have been at work. A coworker who brought her lunch or coffee one day?"

"Coffee could conceal the taste of strychnine, but how did the unsub poison her in the office and then transport her body? People would have seen her die."

"Except that she was a workaholic and often the only one in the office. She arrived a full two hours before the others."

"What about the first victim? Who would she trust?"

"Her roommate said that she didn't really have friends. The only time she went out for anything other than a client, it was for Narcotics Anonymous."

"It'll be impossible to find out who attended her meetings with her."

"We should go through her things. See if we can find the name of her sponsor."

"We can't. She's been dead for four months. The roommate sold everything after a week."

"Fuck."

The conversation continued late into the night, the team running in ever smaller circles. Flynn and Morgan remained firmly opposed to the affair theory, Hotch and Blythe grew more convinced of it, Reid vacillated, and Gideon remained laconic. By the time they retired to their hotel rooms, it was with a pervasive sense of annoyance and confusion.

* * *

 **Author's note:** I had planned to write the first case in one installment, but it's already long and messy enough. The concluding installment should come more quickly than the first.

I would really appreciate feedback on the cases; I'm not sure if I'm quite doing justice to the profiling process, so any suggestions are valuable.


	11. The Other Woman

"Dear Friend: I have nearly died three times since morning."-Marcel Proust

 **Seattle, WA**

 **9:15 am, August 17, 2016**

"Is that a joke? Because it sounds like it has to be a joke."

"Gideon, that's a ridiculous plan."

"I know. It's also the only plan that I've heard proposed."

"It's a total waste of time."

"Not to mention potentially dangerous."

"Hey, it's either a complete waste of time _or_ dangerous. Those are the two mutually exclusive options."

"So either way it's a terrible idea?"

"Yes. But again, it's the _only_ idea."

Gideon had woken up with a plan. A preposterous plan. Helena appeared to be the only person willing to attempt it.

"Look, we may as well try it," she said, breaking in on the heated argument between Hotch, Flynn, and Gideon. "If you're not too uncomfortable playing make-believe with me, Hotch."

"It's not the acting I'm worried about. I do object to placing a member of the team (i.e., you) directly in the crosshairs of the unsub."

"Jesus, Hotch, it's not like I'm going to swallow anything offered to me by kindly strangers. And I have a strong aversion to needles, so that's not an issue."

"And if the unsub has a backup plan? You're not bulletproof."

Helena shrugged.

"Previous data suggests otherwise. Look, this is what I'm good at. I become the person that will accidentally figure out the truth. You happen to have a wedding ring already, so you'd be the ideal prop, but I'm sure that we can figure out an alternative. Gideon, you could do it. You've got a ring."

"I'd prefer not to. Hotch is better in a fight. Anyway, an affair you two will be much more convincing."

"Awwwww. You're not _that_ old, Gideon," said Helena, grinning.

"I appreciate that," he said wryly. "But we may as well take advantage of the unresolved sexual tension between the pair of you. I'll step in if Hotch refuses."

Both Hotch and Helena opened their mouths to protest, but Gideon held up a preemptive hand.

"All I want to hear from either of you is that you agree to participate in my madcap plan. Your furious denial of the obvious can wait."

Helena and Hotch exchanged a glance, but Hotch quickly broke contact.

"I'll do it," he conceded laconically.

"I'll go whore myself up a bit."

* * *

An hour later, Hotch held the door of the Prometheus office building, allowing Blythe to walk through. She smiled coquettishly up at him, brushing closely past his body and sending a shock through his system.

She had effected a remarkable transformation in a matter of less than an hour, donning a form-fitting pencil skirt, a slightly sheer, clinging white blouse, and a pair of heels that, while not as lethal as those of Vivian Grant, still worked wonders on her shapely legs. She had even, complaining bitterly, put on makeup that subtly played up her full lips and bedroom eyes. He frequently found his eyes flicking unbidden to her spectacular figure, wandering from her slender waist to her white calves or the long line of her neck.

 _So maybe Gideon wasn't totally off base. Smug know-it-all._

"Agent Hotchner!" The nervous, mousy man who had greeted Hotch and Morgan yesterday came scurrying forward, twisting his hands. "I was surprised to get your call."

"I'm sorry to impose again. We just have a few questions for your employees."

"Which employees?"

"All of them."

The little man made a high squeaking noise at the back of his throat.

"All…" he trailed off, staring at Hotch as though he had just confessed to setting the building on fire. "We have hundreds of people working here."

"Well, I only need the people in this building."

"That's still nearly 100 employees. Agent Hotchner, we'd like to cooperate with the FBI, but we have work to do. I can't spare-"

"We only need five minutes per person, sir," Helena broke in, smiling reassuringly at the unhappy manager. "We can line them up in batches so that no one is kept away from their desk for more than 20 minutes. Oh, I'm Helena, by the way. Helena Blythe."

"Meet our newest recruit. I'm training her in witness interviews." he said, resting his hand briefly on the small of Helena's back. She cast him a slow sidelong glance through her long lashes, the heart-stopping hint of a sly smile playing around the corners of her mouth.

 _Oh_ fuck _you, Gideon._

* * *

Helena raised her hand to rub her eyes, remembered her eyeliner, and lowered it again with a muttered oath.

"After today, I'm never wearing makeup again," she told Hotch, who smiled at her petulance.

"Just a few more interviews and you can take it all off," he assured her, then flushed at his wording, hurrying on to add: "We just need to make sure that the unsub draws the right conclusion about us."

"We're doing a pretty thorough job of sullying our reputations," she remarked, closing her eyes and interlacing her fingers to stretch her arms above her head with a shudder of pleasure. When she looked back at Hotch, she noticed his straying eyes with slightly more satisfaction than she ought to feel. She was, after all, quite used to being noticed. "Shall we move on to lucky number 89?"

"Oh, yeah," Hotch said with the start of one waking from a dream. She leaned across the couch on which they were situated to close the distance between them to only an inch or so. "Next!" she called to the line on the other side of the door.

"Here we go again," muttered Hotch quietly in her ear, and she rested a hand on his forearm and tilted her head back to laugh just as the 89th person walked through the door. To anyone entering upon the scene, they would appear to interrupt a scene of uncomfortable intimacy.

The tiny old woman who settled in the chair across from them looked familiar to Hotch, and she stood out from the young, speckled software engineers and polished managerial types.

"Hi, thanks for coming in, Ms…?" Helena began, still with the hint of a giggle in her voice.

"Mrs. Isabelle Cream."

"Pardon us, Mrs. Cream," said Hotch solicitously. "We haven't done our homework very well. What is your role at the company?"

"I assist management."

"Like a secretary?" Helena's tone held only the most delicate trace of contempt, concealed by a saccharine smile. Hotch could not help a feeling of admiration for the finesse with which she provoked the employees. He had no doubt that she had made more enemies that day than in the rest of her life combined.

The woman's face crumpled slightly before recovering.

"Yes. And you are?"

"This is Agent Lena Blythe, Mrs. Cream," Hotch replied, resting his left hand briefly on Helena's knee. He noticed Cream's eyes flick to the ring on his finger, then to Blythe's face. The choreography of their act was perfect; he had seen the eyes of countless people make the same journey, some with contempt, some with confusion, and some with envy. "You offered me coffee yesterday, didn't you?"

"That's right, dear," said Mrs. Cream with a warm smile at Hotch. "I like to make sure everyone is well-supplied with the hot drink of their choice."

"My mother was the same way. Ma'am, we could really use your help. As you might have heard by now, Sophie Jackson has been found dead. We need to know who had it out for her. We believe that her murder was personally motivated."

The old woman's eyes widened and filled with tears.

"Oh my, how horrible. Who would want to hurt Sophie?"

"Did you know her well?"

"Only from around the office. But she would come and spend time with the assistants when she needed a little female company. She was one of the only girls in software development."

"That must have been tough for her."

"Oh, it was. She felt so lonely with all those men making eyes at her."

"It's always difficult to be the only woman in the room," mused Helena, glancing slyly at Hotch. "Like a lamb among wolves."

"Is there anything you can tell us about Sophie's interpersonal relationships at work, Mrs. Cream?"

"Only what I've said already. I'm sorry."

Hotch noted an edge in the amiable secretary's manner. Her eyes continually darted to Blythe, an expression of distaste twisting the corners of her thin lips downwards.

"That's just fine, ma'am. If you remember anything else, please call this number." Hotch leaned forward to give her his card. "You'll reach me personally."

"Oh, here, let me write my number on the back," said Helena, leaning over to pluck the card from Hotch's hand and smile at Mrs. Cream as she had with the previous 88 people. "Sometimes it's easier to talk to a woman, don't you think? Do you have a pen, Aaron?"

* * *

Hotch and Helena barely spoke on the way back to the station. He kept his eyes on the road, trying not to think how easy it was to play the adulterous husband with his pretty colleague.

"So what now?" Blythe's voice jerked him out of his mantra: _Picture her as Reid. Picture her as Reid. Pict-_

"Uh-" he replied eloquently. "Now we wait for someone to call in. We'll need to put you in front of the press to appeal to the public. Then we open a tip line and wait. The unsub has already contacted the police once."

Standing on the steps outside the police station, Blythe looked out over the flashing cameras and clamoring journalists with a sense of remote wonder. The idea of broadcasting her face across the nation ran so completely counter to her typical strategy of discretion. Hotch stood next to her at the podium, slightly too close. She turned to look up at his forbidding profile, taking comfort in the steady, quiet strength of his protective presence. He seemed to have sensed her eyes on him, because he looked down at her with a small, reassuring smile.

"You ready?" he murmured in that gentle voice.

"Always," she said with a smile, something in her stomach fluttering.

 _Nerves. Just stage fright. Oh who are you kidding?_ Fuck _you, Gideon._

* * *

She turned to the gathered press and smoothed her expression to an ever-so-slightly nervous smile. Her performance was, she believed, quite serviceable, though far from her most nuanced.

She began with the announcement of the bodies, then transitioned seamlessly to the mislead.

"We believe that these are crimes of opportunity committed by a highly psychotic individual. The profile suggests a man in his late twenties to mid forties, married with children, who preys on innocent women due to an overwhelming sexual drive. We appeal to the public to alert us to any unusual activity through our tip line. Thank you. Agent Hotchner and I will take questions now."

Flynn met Hotch and Blythe as they re-entered the station, grinning.

"That was perfect, Blythe," he chortled, kissing his fingers exaggeratedly. "That should get the unsub riled up. Assuming your adultery theory is accurate, of course."

Blythe smiled at him, but it was without conviction.

"Aww. What's wrong, Duchess?"

"Oh, it's nothing. It's just… well, was it really ethical to give the entire city a fabricated profile? Everyone is looking for the wrong person now."

"It's not the job of civilians to apprehend the unsub," said Hotch. "The real profile goes to the police after we've verified our theory. That's how we'll do the most good."

Blythe opened her mouth, presumably to argue, but she was preempted.

"Blythe!" called Morgan from one of the tipline stations. "Someone wants to speak with you."

She exchanged a look with Flynn, who nodded encouragingly, and Hotch, who merely frowned in concern. Hurrying over to the phone, she mustered a smoky purr.

"This is SSA Helena Blythe."

The voice that came through the speaker was aggressively mechanically warped, gravelly, crackling, barely human.

" _They were not innocent,"_ it snarled.

"Who weren't innocent? The victims?" she asked, forcing her voice to remain steady despite the chill in her blood. "I think they were."

" _Not victims. Whores. Just like you."_

"What have I done, exactly?" Helena tried to imbue her voice with smug contempt and amusement.

" _You should be ashamed of yourself. He is_ married _. Women like you… homewreckers… sluts… you'll all die as you lived: thrashing and moaning. Killed by your own indulgences."_

"Good luck with that, darling," scoffed Helena, sneering. "So far you've gone for people who couldn't fight back. Teenagers? Prostitutes? Please. I'm not impressed and I'm not scared."

Dr. Reid dropped his pen in shock and Flynn gestured frantically for Blythe to desist. She had not been meant to taunt the unsub into targeting her specifically. She ignored them, however.

" _We'll get you too, filthy tart. We'll get you all."_

Helena actually _laughed._

"Let me guess… you're the wallflower. The plain Jane who couldn't attract a man to save her life.

"One of the perks of _fucking_ an FBI agent," she pressed on, her voice dripping with scorn, "is that I'm _untouchable._ You're a poisoner, darling. A coward. You'll never hunt big game."

There was a long, taut silence during which only heavy, distorted breathing could be heard.

" _Watch your back,_ darling, _"_ crackled the voice.

 _Click._

Another silence, during which every male member turned to gape at Blythe, totally aghast.

"Did you get that, Garcia?" she asked, leaning over to speak into Morgan's cell phone.

" _Uh-"_ the tech analyst sounded just as flabbergasted as the rest. " _You mean the part where you just sicced a serial killer on yourself?"_

"No, actually I meant the location of said serial killer. But good on you for paying attention."

" _Oh. Right. Yeah, I did. Another payphone. Just sent the location to you guys. Red-"_

"Thanks, Doll. Shall we, boys?"

"No, _we_ are not going anywhere," snarled Hotch, regaining his voice. "After what you just pulled, we can't put you out on the street looking for the unsub."

"What I just pulled? I just got you the gender, motivation, and location of our unsub."

"That'll do, Blythe. You're staying here."

"But Gideon-"

Helena fell silent as the rest of the team turned as one and left the station, her blood boiling. Nerves still high from the thrill of the act, she paced to and fro, cell phone clutched tightly in her white-knuckled fist.

* * *

Hotch strangled the steering wheel in a vice-like grip. Never had he met anyone quite as adept at infuriating him as Helena Blythe.

"Quite the firecracker, isn't she?" Flynn chuckled beside him. Hotch glanced over at him sharply, his irritation mounting at the indulgent amusement of the older agent.

"Am I the only person who sees a problem with her conduct?" he snapped, trying in vain to curb his annoyance.

"Of _course_ we all see the problem with it, Hotch. You're not the only one who cares about safety, you know. But," he added with a fond smile, "even you have to admit that the girl has balls.

"And let's face it," he continued, looking slyly at Hotch, "you wouldn't be nearly as angry at Morgan if he pulled something like that. She took Gideon's strategy and ran with it, and it yielded results. She's got the talent and the moxie, all she needs is a little circumspection. And that'll come with time."

Hotch brought the car to a screeching halt at a curb in front of the accessory phone booth.

"We're here," he said tersely, his hand hovering over the gun at his hip.

Gideon's SUV pulled up behind theirs and he, Morgan, and Reid emerged.

"Alright, spread out and canvas, gentlemen. We want any witness who might have seen the person using that payphone."

It had rained heavily that evening, and the lights of the city were doubled in the reflections on the wet concrete. Reid ducked into the bar directly across from the telephone.

"Hold on, son," rumbled the large (in every dimension) bouncer at the door, the depth of his voice shaking Reid to his very bones. "I'm going to need to see ID." The man smirked and looked Dr. Reid up and down. "Do you even have a driver's license?"

"Uh-oh, sorry-" he rummaged desperately for his wallet, finding that his pockets had suddenly become fathomless pits in which nothing could be found. "I'm just-"

"FBI," said another deep voice from behind him, causing Reid to jump out of his skin and whirl around so that he came face to face with Flynn's chin. The enormous gray man held up his badge. "The whelp's with me."

The bouncer, yielding to Flynn's superior authority and size, stepped respectfully aside.

The two agents waded into the dense, smoky air. On the walls, dimly lit with yellow bulbs, mediocre life drawings of nude women gave the place a sort of seedy eroticism.

"Good evening, folks," began Flynn in his customary ironical blend of formal and vernacular language. "We're just here to ask a few questions. My colleague and I will try not to spoil the fun too much, but your cooperation would be swell."

They circulated quickly, finding that no one had looked across the street. Finally, however, Reid struck gold.

"9:00?" said the tall, ungainly female bartender, polishing a glass absently as she stared at Reid. "Yeah, that's when I started my shift. Let's see… phone booth…"

"You see it on your way in?"

"Sorry, yeah, that's right. Hum… I think that there was someone in there. Little old lady. She was holding something near her mouth…" she mimed the gesture thoughtfully. "I remember because she looked so furious."

"Would you mind coming down to the precinct and talking to a sketch artist?" asked Reid, attempting to suppress his excitement.

"Oh, okay. Sorry, I just need to pass off my shift and meet you around the back."

* * *

"I've seen her before. "

Hotch stared at the sketch in perplexity, then raised his eyes to Blythe, who looked just as puzzled.

"That tiny secretary from Prometheus. How the hell would she even manage that?"

"Morgan send out patrols to track down Isabella Cream. We need to know where she is and keep an eye on her. Then call Garcia. Tell her we need everything on this woman."

"Sure thing, boss. Someone should probably talk to our witness."

"Blythe, go. Where's Gideon?"

"Giving the profile with Flynn. Even if Cream isn't our woman, the theory's looking pretty solid."

Blythe departed in silence, still slightly sullen from her earlier exclusion from the search party. Hotch watched her go, then returned his eyes to Reid.

"That woman couldn't have been more than 5'2". Not to mention elderly and physically weak. How would she transport three victims out into a remote corner of the woods?"

"There are ways around physical limitations. The bodies were dumped in a relatively accessible area. Still, that's a lot of work for a little old woman."

"If she is involved, it seems likely that she had help. Someone younger, stronger, and easy to control. We need to start looking for a secondary signature. Some sign of another hand in the murders."

"Hey," said Morgan, re-entering the room abruptly, "you'll want to hear his. Tell them, Garcia."

" _So, I've been doing some digging on sweet Granny Strychnine. She used to be a minor artist married to a trauma surgeon, Joseph Cream, but they've been separated for twenty years now. He lives in New York with one of the nurses at his hospital."_

"Background fits, then. Can you find signs of a stressor? Some traumatic incident that happened four months ago?"

" _Well, there's the kicker. Her life has been pretty uneventful since she got divorced. She moved around, took various temp jobs, kept to herself… or so it appeared at first glance._

" _She's changed cities four times in the last twenty years. In each city, while she was there, four women were murdered._ However, _someone always went down for it. The cops tracked them down and got a confession immediately."_

"Any patterns in the victimology, method, or the killers?"

" _In fact, we're three for three. I can't pin down the earlier victims, obviously, but several of the later victims are linked in one way or another with a married man in his forties."_

"So it's possible that they were all affair partners. Method?"

" _The first set of murders (in Philadelphia) were blitz attacks. The girls had their throats slit from behind. After that, though, the method changed. Poison every time, though the type changed. The last set of murders in New York were done with strychnine, just like these."_

"The unsub evolved. Finally found the method that gave her the most satisfaction."

"Strychnine causes physical convulsions that kill the victims by wearing out their bodies. It could be that she views the physical effects as simulation of the sex act."

"Not to mention, she snuck it into the substances that she considered immoral: heroine, alcohol, even coffee. Symbols of their bad habits."

"Tell us about the convicted killers, Garcia."

" _I'm faxing you their information now. I think you'll enjoy yourselves. Oh, and one more thing: I compared the voices from the two phone calls we've had with the unsub. They're heavily distorted and not easy to filter, but I can tell you for sure that the cadence and inflection indicate two separate callers."_

"Baby girl, have I told you lately how spectacular you are?"

" _Incessantly. But I'll allow it."_

* * *

Helena found the witness, Molly Moreau, sitting in an interview room staring at her huge folded hands. She was about 30, tattooed, at least 6 feet tall, broad-shouldered and lean, with thin lank hair, mottled skin, and a flat-featured face. She was dressed in a manner clearly meant to be provocatively sexy, but on her it merely looked comical.

"Ms. Moreau?" Blythe murmured, keeping her voice soft so as not to startle her. The woman jumped nevertheless, turning to stare at Blythe. "Agent Helena Blythe," she continued with a smile, holding out her hand. Moreau's hand enveloped hers entirely as she shook it. "I just have a few more questions."

"Oh, sorry, yeah, of course… sorry, is this about the murders that you announced on TV?"

The woman's body language was meek and submissive, incongruous with her imposing stature.

Blythe considered her with a frown. Finally, she decided to answer the question.

"Yes, we're trying to track down a tip."

"Hey, sorry, could we do the questions outside please? I really need a smoke." Moreau smiled apologetically. Indeed, everything about her was apologetic; she used the word "sorry" like punctuation.

Helena examined Moreau under the guise of a sympathetic smile. She noted the fresh tattoo of a cross on her right bicep, the silver crucifix that she toyed with continuous, and her inability to make eye contact, the way she turned her body defensively and shrank away from Blythe. Guilt.

 _I can work with that._

"Damn."

Hotch, Morgan, and Reid passed the files amongst themselves.

Three women: tall, athletic, homely women with rap sheets including assault and stalking. They had all pleaded guilty at their trials, all gone to prison for life.

None had any clear connection with Isabella Cream.

"Is it just me, or-"

"Garcia, we need everything you have on a Molly Moreau. Around 30, living in Seattle."

" _Rrright. Got her. Ooh. Spooky."_

"What?"

" _She so similar to the convicts. Rap sheet: redacted charge for assault when she was 15 against a girl at her school, a few drug possession charges, and a restraining order filed against her by some guy at her last steady job."_

"Oh my…" Reid breathed, his eyes wide and terrified. "Oh no no no. How did I not think of that?"

"What's the matter, Pretty Boy?"

"It didn't occur to me at the time because I was so glad to finally have a lead on the unsub, but she saw the person in the phone booth across a dark, poorly lit, rainy street? She said that she saw Cream when she arrived for her shift, but when she left it was through the back door. Assuming she came in the same way, she wouldn't have seen the booth."

"So… we just sent the rookie to interview a murderer twice her size. Whom she personally taunted and provoked. Alone."

The door slammed. Hotch had taken off, drawing out his gun as he went.

"Next time Gideon proposes a plan, remind me to punch him in the nose."

* * *

Isabella Cream smiled graciously at the young waitress who had brought her hot chocolate and eclair.

"Oh, thank you, my dear."

The pretty blonde girl beamed at her, as all young women did. _Saccharine twits._

"Anything else, you let me know, okay?"

But the kindly old woman's attention had already returned to the window, and specifically to the ugly brick of the police station wall. They were late.

She watched almost without blinking, occasionally raising her cup to her lips for an automatic sip of the warm coco. The minutes stretched excruciatingly, and the eclair tasted like ash in her mouth.

Finally, finally her patience was gratified.

Two figures exited the building and stood together on the empty sidewalk under a street light, one large and hulking, the other petite and dainty. The lamplight caressed the hair of the latter, limning the sumptuous red hair with a halo of bright gold.

The larger woman drew something out of her pocket, and brought it to her lips. Cream saw the tiny pinprick of yellow light as Moreau lit her cigarette. The redhead beside her fidgeted with something on her right arm for a moment before inclining her luminous head and accepting the small white cylinder proffered by her companion. Isabella Cream held her breath as Blythe took it between her lips, lit it, and inhaled deeply.

For ten minutes, the woman leaned against the wall and chatted, Blythe with the relaxation and confidence of a woman who knew her own beauty, Moreau with the flinching diffidence of an oft-beaten dog. Although she knew the process intimately, Cream found her fingers rapping impatiently against her table. To ease her nerves, she ordered another hot chocolate from the blonde bimbo. She sipped at watched, trying to enjoy the last moments of Helena Blythe's life of sin and self-indulgence.

Finally she saw the first sign. The easy, infectious smile on the girl's face froze, then contorted into a rictus grin. She began to twitch, the progression exaggerated by the concentration of the formula in the cigarette. Her body convulsed and she fell to the floor, her back arching and her feet kicking up the puddles in the street. Gingerly, before anyone else in the coffee shop saw, Molly picked up the twisting little body and carried her away to the alleyway upon which they had agreed.

Hastily, Cream laid down a twenty dollar bill and exited the cafe, ignoring the waitress's goodbye. A powerful thrill ran through the tiny woman's veins as she let her hand rest in her large purse, caressing the sleek black object inside.

 _Now to finish the job._

* * *

 **Author's Note: Argh, sorry. Apparently there will be three parts to this case. I'll have to figure out how to make them more concise in future.**


	12. The Innocent

**"Now I believe that lovers should be draped in flowers**

 **And laid entwined together on a bed of clover**

 **And left there to sleep**

 **Left there to dream of their happiness"**

-Bright Eyes, "A Perfect Sonnet"

Molly Moreau dropped the body as soon as she reached the blackness of the alleyway, wiping her sweating palms on her shirt and fingering her crucifix.

"Do you think she believed it?" she asked, unable to keep the tremor from her voice.

Agent Blythe rose to her feet, her face cold and composed. There was no sign of mercy or forgiveness on her shadowy features, no hint of absolution for her supplicant.

Moreau felt her heart twist the way it had in the interrogation room.

 _Blythe sat with her fingers steepled in front of her, her blue eyes steely and full of contempt. A photograph and a shoebox rested on the table between them. Moreau could not tear her eyes from the picture. She stared at the large dark eyes that regarded her solemnly, accusingly._

" _That was taken on Elicia's last birthday."_

 _Blythe's inflection on the word "last" left no doubt as to her meaning._

" _We think that she was already being raped." Her voice rang out so clearly and matter-of-factly._

" _She… she wasn't_ raped _," whispered Moreau hoarsely, forgetting to feign ignorance. "She_ wanted _to sleep with him. That's what she said."_

" _That's what I said too, Molly. That's what we all say. It's what we tell ourselves."_

 _Moreau's eyes snapped up to Helena's face, which may as well have been made of marble for all the compassion it held._

" _What?"_

" _Because it's always someone we owe it to. It's not really the scary man in the alley, Molly," the way she said it, even Moreau's own name sounded like an accusation. "It's someone we need."_

" _Who…"_

" _See, I couldn't tell him to go away, Molly. He was the only person standing between my father and the liquor cabinet. He was so generous, you know. The perfect sponsor. He turned my dad around. One day I was waiting for him to pass out so that I could water down the vodka in the dead of night, the next he was waking up in time to take us to school and come to our ballet performances. And I had one person to thank. I was so_ grateful."

" _Please stop," Moreau pleaded, her eyes flickering between Helena and Elicia Diaz. "Please."_

" _And then he offered to take me shopping. He said that he'd always wanted a daughter to spoil. That all he wanted was to find me the perfect dress for my father's fiftieth birthday party. How could I refuse a kindness like that?_

" _And how could I refuse when he followed me into the dressing room, Molly? How could I do anything but bite my tongue when he put a finger to my lips and pushed me up against the door? How could I do_ anything _but stare at myself in the dressing room mirror, wearing that pretty, pretty dress, and wait for him to finish? And when he bought it for me? What do you think I said, Molly?"_

 _Moreau took deep, shuddering breaths, unable to speak, closing her eyes to avoid the blazing blue spotlight of Blythe's impassive gaze._

" _I said_ "thank you," _Molly. And that's all I said every other time after that._

" _Look in the box, Molly."_

 _Moreau shook her head furiously, screwing up her face and trying in vain to banish the Elicia Day's black gaze, which floated behind her eyelids. She clutched the cross, feeling it dig angrily into her palm._

" _Molly," Blythe's voice was coaxing now. Gentler. "It's alright. I just want you to look in the box."_

 _The hint of softness produced such a sense of relief that Moreau could not help but obey. She would have done anything to assuage some of the feeling of accusation in the other woman's voice._

" _Do you see the blood, Molly? Do you know why it's there?"_

" _N-no-"_

" _Yes you do, Molly. You saw the scars on her didn't you? When you carried that little body into the woods."_

" _I didn't-"_

" _Helena, that's enough," said a gentle male voice from the behind her. Molly jerked around to look at the tall, dark-haired man who stood in the doorway of the interrogation room. "I'll take it from here."_

 _The red haired woman rose from her chair, casting Molly one more venomous look before leaving the room. As she passed the man, they exchanged a meaningful look, her face full of trust, his with compassion. Then he took her place at the table, regarding Molly with earnest brown eyes free of the cruelty and judgment in Helena Blythe's frigid blue gaze._

" _I'm sorry about Helena," he began, addressing her with almost paternal warmth. "She's a good agent, but she's not particularly good at Christian forgiveness."_

(Outside the interrogation room, Helena had grinned broadly, pleased that Hotch had picked up on her strategy so quickly. Raw and full of guilt, all that Molly Moreau needed now as a confessor.)

" _Is that true? About the last one? Was she…?"_

 _Hotch nodded solemnly, and Molly dissolved into tears, her stomach contorting. Isabella Cream had been so kind, so reliable, so persuasive…_

" _I didn't know," she forced out through sobs._

" _I know, Molly," he murmured, his voice unbearably kind. "You just trusted her. You just did as she told you."_

 _Molly nodded furiously, rubbing at her eyes and gasping for air._

" _She said… she said that they were ruining lives. She said she needed help to fix everything. She said that no wife should have to go through what I did."_

" _So you helped her kill those women."_

" _NO," Molly howled, shaking her head. "She said we were purifying them. That if they repented, they would be spared."_

" _She lied, Molly. She lied and because of it, three people are dead," he pressed on, some of the gentility draining from his deep voice. Sobs continued to wrack Molly's body as she buried her face in her hands. "But it's not too late for you, Molly. You can still make this right."_

" _H-how?" she asked, hope alleviating her misery just enough for her to speak._

" _I need you to talk to me, Molly. I need to know everything. Then we can figure it out together."_

Glancing at the mouth of the alley way, Helena checked her watch. Molly Moreau fidgeted and watched her undemonstrative companion, unable to tear her eyes from the small, fragile figure before her. Then, without another glance at Molly, Blythe turned walked past her, fading into the shadows of the narrow street.

Moreau stood alone, waiting in the darkness for her chance at atonement.

Treading silently to the dead end of the alleyway, Blythe joined Hotch behind a dumpster, glancing around at the armed agents concealed in every corner and shadow. Wordlessly, Hotch gestured to the kevlar vest and Glock that he had brought for her. She donned them without making a sound. The quiet in the alley was interrupted only by the occasional drip of water from the roofs of the surrounding buildings.

Blythe stared at the peeling paint on the wall next to her, trying not to remember the look of desperation, guilt, and helpless obedience on Molly Moreau's wide, open face. Blythe could not deny the vicious pleasure that she took in the act of manipulation, the intoxicating joy of gaining control over another's mind. But to take advantage of the woman's better angels… it left her with a bloodied, bitter taste in her mouth.

 _Arkady would be_ so _proud._

She was spared further introspection by the sound of shuffling footsteps reverberating through the alley. Every muscle in her body coiled as she heard Cream's warm, creaky voice.

"Well, this is an unpleasant situation, Molly dear." Helena's heart sank at the tone of mild reproach in Cream's voice. She had made out the situation quickly. She glanced at Hotch, who shook his head and shot her a warning glance. Molly began to speak in a shaking voice, reciting the lines that Hotch had coached her through.

"Mrs. Cream, I need to talk to you about what we've been doing. I think-"

"Where is she, love? What did she say to change your mind? I told you that she's a liar."

"She's not here. I changed my mind-"

" _You_ didn't do anything, dear. She changed it for you. You always were so impressionable. She took advantage."

Helena listened, torn between disgust and admiration. Isabella Cream had figured out an excellent backdoor into the weak, easily influenced mind of Molly Moreau: the firm, benevolent, maternal attitude that she had cultivated perfectly suited Moreau's desperate need for guidance and affirmation.

"I think-"

"How many agents, dear?"

"What?"

Blood running cold in her veins, Helena cast a frantic look at Hotch, whose face was set in a stony mask. He shook his head.

" _If we want to take them both alive, we need Molly to talk her down. Otherwise she swallows the suicide pill and we lose the chance to interrogate her and save the hostages. We can afford to lose Molly Moreau. Cream has to live."_

He had told her that in a voice that brooked no opposition.

It took every fiber of self-control to tether her impulse to leap out and intervene in the scene playing out just ten feet away.

"How. Many. Agents? I know you brought them, Molly. I'm not stupid."

"I-I didn't. It's just me."

"Then _where,_ " hissed Cream, her voice suddenly transforming from pleasant, elderly creak to an inhuman snarl, "is Helena Blythe?"

"She's… I've hidden her," Molly lied lamely, "I won't take you to her until we've talked. Until you tell me who you poisoned."

"Liar."

Helena heard the _snap_ of what sounded like a purse, then a rustle. Then…

 _Click._

She began to react, but-

 _Bang._

* * *

Molly felt many things in no particular order. She felt air rush past her ears, whistling gently. She felt a jolt that shook her entire body and sent her keeling backwards. She felt sense of vertigo, remembering with nostalgia the trust falls that her seventh grade drama teacher had liked so much. She felt sharp, searing agony branding the right side of her chest.

By the time she hit the ground, lying on her back and staring at the sky, she did not feel the impact. Her vision had been enclosed by a black fog that crowded out the starry, rained-out sky, though her eyes were cast uselessly upwards.

She did not feel the frenetic clutching of a pair of small white hands at the freely gushing wound in her chest, nor feel the warmth of a freckled cheek as someone lowered an ear to the hole, listening to the telltale sucking sound that emanated from it.

Nor did she realize the incoherent string of words that tumbled from her own lips. All she could make out among the sound and fury were three words murmured into her ear: " _It's all forgiven."_

Briefly, ever so briefly, her vision cleared and she gazed up into the clear heavens.

She did not feel the fingers that gently closed her eyelids.

* * *

Helena's tenuous resolve snapped at the sound of the gunshot. She rushed out from behind the dumpster without pausing to draw her weapon. Hotch followed close behind, gesturing to the agents to follow. While the others swarmed Isabella Cream, Helena knelt beside the toppled Moreau, casting around frantically for some fragment of plastic to stop the influx of air through the bullet wound as it slowly collapsed the gasping woman's lungs. The woman's heart was working perversely against her, pumping blood from her body with endless determination and replacing it with frigid air.

Blythe tore Moreau's tight polyester shirt to clear the wound, pressing her palm against it in a vain attempt to block its generous bleeding and greedy sucking.

All the while, nonsensical phrases poured from the dying woman. Something about… trust falls? Shift changes… then a series of garbled apologies. They sounded like prayers, half-formed confessions, choked pleas for forgiveness, which grew quieter and quieter as her lungs were flattened by the air squeezing past Helena's small, useless hand.

Helena gazed into the cloudy eyes as they gazed unseeing into empty air, then to the gush of blood over her own fingers. Suddenly, she felt terribly tired.

Leaning down, she murmured the only words that she could imagine would bring any succour.

Molly Moreau sighed softly, imperceptibly, as her treacherous heart stuttered to a halt.

Wiping one of her crimson hands on her skirt, Helena raised it to shut the wide, gray eyes.

"Helena."

She did not turn around at the sound of Hotch's soft, tentative voice. She felt him kneel beside her and rest a large, warm hand on her shoulder, but it was as though her skin were covered in an icy, impermeable sheet of stone.

"There's nothing you can do for her."

She stood up suddenly, and Hotch rose with her, clasping both of her shoulders as if to steady her, though her legs felt perfectly solid under her. Suddenly she felt very aware that her coat was soaked in still-warm blood, that it would be unbearable to wear it for even a moment longer. Her struggle to free herself from the thick wool shook Hotch's hands away.

"Stop, leave it on," he told her sternly, but in an undertone. "You're in shock. You'll freeze."

"I have to-it's all-just-" she muttered in a thick, obstructed voice.

Undeterred, she tore it away from her and dropped it on the ground-first the kevlar, then the warm, red-stained wool. As it turned out, he was right-the night air against her skin felt intolerably cold. Sighing, Hotch shrugged off his own jacket, which he wore the bullet proof vest that looked so natural on him, and draped it over her shoulders.

She stared up into his face, searching for some sort of comfort in his unshakeable stability, in the body heat that began to thaw her skin.

He wrapped an arm around her, gathering her close, and together they followed the arresting officers back into the station.

* * *

"It doesn't fit. She doesn't just kill without reason. It's just not in the profile."

"Are you really willing to bet lives on a _profile_?"

"It doesn't look like it matters. None of us could get her to talk."

"We'll send Blythe. She'll get a reaction."

"Gideon," Hotch intervened for the first time since they had apprehended Cream. "You are _not_ sending her in."

Helena had a hard time parsing the argument that raged between the rest of the team. Still wrapped in Hotch's coat, she had remained quiet to conceal the thick choking feeling in her throat. At the sound of Hotch's near-snarl, however, she glanced up from the tabletop.

"You can send me in. I'll talk to her," to her displeasure, her voice came out hoarse and quiet. Nevertheless, it stopped the discussion cold.

"Helena-"

"What do you want me to say?" Her voice gained strength now as the task took hold.

"I need you to fluster her first. Then run through a few theories. We'll watch and see if she flinches."

"Gideon-"

"Sure. Walk me through the strategy."

* * *

Hotch watched from behind the mirrored glass with a confusing alloy of anger, concern, and pity as the blood-soaked girl made her way to sit across the table from Isabella Cream. The old woman sat perfectly still, her innocuous little face settled into a complacent smile.

Helena sat with her back to them, her posture relaxed and unaffected. Quite a feat for a woman who had been trembling and effectively nonverbal ten minutes ago.

"Nice shot back there," she remarked lightly. "She was dead before she hit the ground."

The callous humor in Helena's voice, though he knew it to be false, disturbed him. From the expression on her face, Cream clearly found it equally disconcerting. The smirk dropped from her face, which contorted into disgust.

" _I_ didn't kill her, you bitch. _You_ did. _You_ turned her and used her as _bait._ "

Hotch watched Helena's back for any sign of weakening, for any manifestation of her guilt in her thin white shoulders. He could see none, however. In fact, she responded to the invective with a chuckle and a shake of the head. He could only imagine the maddeningly carefree smile from the fury on Cream's face.

"Those are some impressive mental contortions, Cream. Although I suppose that you're an expert in those by now. This isn't exactly the first partner that you're thrown under the bus, is it?"

"I don't hurt anyone who doesn't _deserve_ it. Which is more than I can say for _you._ "

"Is that so? Fascinating," she drawled, leaning back in her chair. "So what did Molly Moreau do to deserve it? I assume that the whole murdering thing doesn't count for you."

"She was a criminal and a drunkard. A waste case. That crucifix she wore was a lie."

"I see. And whom did I hurt? Since apparently Molly doesn't matter."

"The _wife._ The poor wife of that cheating son of a-"

"I see. So why not go after the husband? He's the one with the-"

Helena stopped speaking suddenly, responding to the same split-second expression that Hotch and Gideon noticed from behind the glass. For just a moment, the ugly sneer had dropped from Cream's face, replaced once again by a smug little smile.

"I see," she murmured. "You poisoned the men, didn't you?"

An angry red flush suffused Cream's wrinkled face as it twisted into a mask of fury. She sputtered, vacillating between furious denial and vague threats.

"Right. I think that's all I needed. Thanks very much."

Blythe rose from her chair and turned on her heel, leaving the tiny crone to rage weakly against her restraints.

Outside the interrogation room, she paused and leaned against the door, her shoulders caving slightly into a slump.

Gideon had already begun barking orders, sending emergency teams to the three intended victims.

Hotch approached the pale, shaking girl. He wasn't quite sure what to say, but he offered his arm to her. She smiled gratefully and rested one lily-white hand on his forearm and shifting her weight so that she leaned heavily on it.

"Still friends?" she asked in a hesitant voice. She looked suddenly so hopeful and vulnerable that he could do nothing but press his lips to her forehead and rest his chin on the top of her bright hair.

"Always."


End file.
